An independent research and editorial practice for the retrieval age
The next person deciding about you may meet a sentence that nobody at your company wrote.
Machines now sit inside consequential decisions about what to buy, hire, fund, recommend and trust. We measure the sentence, find where the record breaks, and repair it without moving the ruler.
We measure not whether an assistant knows your brand, but whether it recommends you for the reason you have spent years building.
A first read is $2,500 and takes one pass. If there is nothing worth measuring, we say so and stop there.
The referee is never for sale. The advocate is.
Where it starts
Two ways in.
Both priced. Each credited forward in full within ninety days.
The Field Read
The Assay™$2,500
A look, not a measurement. Single pass, open record, no frozen battery, no control set, no second reader. It shows you the shape of the problem, not the size of it, and it is never dressed as a baseline. Read on →
The Dig
Editorial$7,500
The evidence, and the sun. Two weeks on one subject: what the company is in named and dated facts, and the position the evidence will carry, declared before the wave that tests it. Usually after the baseline. Sometimes before it, when the decision cannot wait. Read on →
Above them, pricing scales with the number of subjects measured and how often the battery re-runs — never with hours.
Two scores
Retrieval
Are you the answer?
Whether you become the answer in the relevant consideration circumstance.
Fidelity
Is the reason yours?
Whether the reason given remains specific, accurate and attributable to you — not category language.
Fame is presence. Retrieval is preference. Fidelity is ownership.
The problem
You cannot optimize for infinite questions. You can author a finite record.
A company can be famous and still lose the decision. A machine can know your facts and award their meaning to someone else. It can also fill a thin record with the category average.
The Assay shows where.
How it works
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Measure
Freeze the decision space and establish the baseline.
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Author
Repair what the evidence warrants. If the fact is missing, the work belongs in the business first. If the evidence exists, Editorial authors the record and builds the circulation plan for where it should travel — owned, earned and paid.
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Remeasure
Run the same decision space again.
A client can buy the Baseline and the Standing Wave™ indefinitely without commissioning a word of editorial.
Different layer · different question
Three disciplines meet the same machine. Only one of them asks whether the answer is yours.
| Dimension | RAG | GEO / AI visibility | The Assay™ |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is it? | A technical retrieval architecture. | A visibility / optimization discipline. | A representation measurement and diagnostic. |
| Primary question | What information should the system retrieve? | Are we appearing, cited or visible? | Are we the answer — and is the reason ours? |
| Unit of concern | Sources, chunks, retrieved context. | Mentions, citations, visibility surfaces. | Sentence, representation, decision circumstance. |
| Starts with | System architecture. | Discoverability and content visibility. | A consequential decision. |
| Reality gap | Not its primary job. | Not usually its primary job. | Can identify when the desired sentence outruns the underlying evidence. |
| After the finding | Improve the retrieval system. | Improve visibility / discoverability. | Change the business, evidence, authority, editorial or circulation — depending on what failed. |
| Longitudinal proof | System evaluation. | Visibility monitoring. | Standing Wave reruns the same decision space. |
These are not mutually exclusive. RAG helps systems retrieve. GEO helps content become visible. The Assay asks whether the representation produced under real consideration is actually yours.
Editorial
What deserves to replace it.
Measurement tells us where the representation fails. Editorial decides what deserves to replace it. A missing record can be authored. A missing fact cannot. If the evidence required by the desired representation does not exist, the repair belongs in the business first. Do the work. Then write the record.
Circulation
The record has to travel.
Editorial does not end when the sentence is written. We determine what evidence needs to travel, what form can carry it, and where another voice would make the record stronger.
Every material Editorial engagement ends with a Custom Circulation Plan across owned, earned and paid.
The public record
Touchstone
The public market read.
Independent research. Hypotheses declared before the wave; findings, disagreement and misses published after. Published, not sold — inclusion cannot be bought.
The questions we are asked first
Is The Assay GEO?
No. GEO and AI-visibility work generally focus on appearing, being cited or becoming more visible in generative answers. The Assay starts with the decision and measures whether you become the answer — and whether the rationale remains yours. GEO may become useful after the diagnosis.
What if our scores are already good?
We say so. Every baseline can conclude None. If no action is warranted, the engagement ends there.
Does this prove revenue impact?
No. The Assay measures representation. Standing Wave measures whether that representation moved under the same decision space. Revenue or valuation causality requires separate commercial evidence.
Contact
Bring the decision.
Client work begins with the question being decided — not a deliverables list.