Our Technology: A First-Principles Approach
This is a briefing on the first-principles engineering that powers SynthGrid. Our architecture is built for absolute control, security, and performance, answering one question for our customers: 'Why can you do what others cannot?'
Scroll to explore our architecture.
CairnDB: A High-Speed, Verifiable Object Store
CairnDB is a purpose-built database engine, designed from first principles for a single task: providing a high-speed, auditable, in-memory store for the system's most critical assets. It is engineered for the extreme read-dominant workloads of AI memory and core security assets.
The Problem it Solves: AI workloads require instant, concurrent access to core data, but the integrity of that data must be absolute. Traditional databases introduce performance bottlenecks (locking, I/O) and operational complexity that are unacceptable for this mission-critical role.
The Payoff: Extreme read performance without sacrificing data integrity. By using a simple, index-last commit strategy, we achieve crash-consistent writes without the overhead of a transaction log. This allows for concurrent, memory-speed reads, providing a foundational performance and reliability advantage.
Technical Deep Dive
- Crash-Consistent Writes via Index-Last Commit: Writes are atomic from the reader's perspective. Data is written to the log first, then the index is updated. If a crash occurs before the index is written, the database state remains consistent. This provides the integrity of a transactional system with a fraction of the complexity.
- Lock-Free, In-Memory Reads: The entire dataset is held in memory, and the concurrency model is designed to be non-blocking. Writes are serialized, but they never impede the AI's ability to read, which is essential for a high-throughput AI.
- Immutable Log for Perfect Auditability: Data is never overwritten. This append-only architecture provides a complete, immutable history of all changes to core assets, which is critical for security forensics and auditability.
- Configurable AES-256 Encryption: The entire log can be encrypted at rest with AES-256. While configurable, this is a non-optional security control for all production environments.
Clearance System: A Deterministic Access Model
The Clearance System is a deterministic implementation of the ABAC model. Users and AI agents are assigned a list of 'clearances' (e.g., 'HR', 'FINANCE'), which act as their security attributes. Access to any object is granted based on these attributes.
The Problem it Solves: Conventional ABAC systems rely on complex policy engines that are powerful but opaque. This complexity makes them difficult to audit and prone to misconfigurations, which are a primary source of security breaches. For a high-assurance system, this is an unacceptable risk.
The Payoff: An access control system that is verifiably secure and completely predictable. By replacing a complex policy engine with a simple, deterministic rule set, we eliminate an entire class of configuration risks. The result is a high-assurance security model that can be audited and understood at a glance.
Technical Deep Dive
- Deterministic, Policy-Free ABAC: Our model implements the core principle of ABAC—access based on attributes—without a complex policy engine. The 'clearance' tag is the attribute, and the rule is simple and deterministic: to access an object, a user must possess all of the security attributes required by that object. This makes access control decisions predictable and verifiable.
- System-Wide, Per-Object Control: Every object in the system—from memory fragments to AI agents—is protected by its own set of required security attributes. This provides granular, system-wide enforcement of data access policies.
- Engineered for Auditability: The simplicity of the model makes it trivial to audit. An administrator can see a user's list of attributes and know exactly what they can and cannot access. There are no complex rules, inheritance hierarchies, or environmental conditions to decipher, leading to a clear and unambiguous security posture.
Data Science Engine
A complete, end-to-end data science environment that allows our AI agents to perform sophisticated data analysis and generate rich, interactive visualizations by writing and executing Python code.
The Problem it Solves: Data science is a critical capability for a modern AI system, but it requires the ability to programmatically interact with data. This engine provides that capability, running all AI-generated code within our Verified Sandbox.
The Payoff: The ability to automate complex data analysis and visualization tasks. This is a core component of changing your unit economics, as it allows you to automate tasks that would otherwise require a team of expensive data scientists, with the assurance that all operations are securely contained.
Technical Deep Dive
- Secure by Design: All AI-generated Python code is executed in our Verified Sandbox. This provides a provably secure, isolated execution environment, allowing the AI to safely perform complex data analysis.
- Natural Language Interface: Users can request analysis and visualizations in plain English. The AI uses the full context of the task to write and execute a Python script that is perfectly tailored to the user's specific, ad-hoc question.
- Automatic Schema Extraction: The engine includes a powerful, built-in schema extraction tool. This allows the AI to automatically analyze the structure of a data file and generate a detailed, machine-readable schema, which is a critical capability for autonomous, data-centric AI.
Dolmen: A High-Assurance UI Toolkit
Dolmen is a UI toolkit built around a single, non-negotiable principle: verifiable security. Its architecture—a simple reactive core, a curated dependency set, and a first-party script bundling model—is a set of interlocking decisions made to achieve this goal.
The Problem it Solves: Conventional UI frameworks are not designed for high-assurance environments. Their vast, unauditable dependency trees and reliance on third-party script origins make it architecturally impossible to enforce a truly strict Content Security Policy (CSP).
The Payoff: A verifiably secure UI layer, proven by a consistent A+ rating from the Mozilla Observatory. By rejecting the conventional framework model, we gain the control necessary to enforce security policies (like a `script-src 'self'` CSP) that are simply not feasible in most off-the-shelf solutions.
Technical Deep Dive
- Curated & Auditable Dependency Set: We use powerful, best-in-class libraries for specific tasks like data visualization, but we deliberately avoid a monolithic UI framework. This keeps our dependency footprint an order of magnitude smaller than a comparable application built on a conventional framework, making a complete security audit of our entire frontend supply chain feasible.
- First-Party Scripting Model: Our curated dependency set makes it possible to bundle the entire application into a single, first-party script. This eliminates the risk of a compromised CDN or other third-party script provider, which is a primary vector for frontend attacks.
- Strict CSP Enforcement by Design: The first-party scripting model is what enables us to enforce a `script-src 'self'` Content Security Policy. This is the core technical control that guarantees no untrusted code can execute, and it is the foundation of our A+ security posture.
Continuous Security Validation
A suite of automated tests that run when the server starts, and continue to run periodically, to validate its own security posture. It asserts that all security headers have the exact strongest possible values, and then actively probes its own defenses with requests from a simulated malicious origin to ensure its CORS logic correctly rejects the threat.
The Problem it Solves: Security misconfigurations are a leading cause of breaches, and they are often silent failures. A security control that is not actively and continuously tested is a security control that cannot be trusted.
The Payoff: A verifiable guarantee that the server is secure before it accepts a single connection, and remains so throughout its lifetime. By treating a failed security self-test as a fatal error that immediately terminates the application, we provide a level of assurance that is impossible to achieve with manual configuration and periodic scanning.
Technical Deep Dive
- Live Adversarial CORS Testing: At startup and on a recurring schedule, the server actively probes its own running instance with requests from a simulated 'malicious' origin. It asserts that its own CORS logic correctly identifies and rejects the threat. This is not a unit test; it is a live, in-process validation of the running server's security posture.
- Strict Security Header Validation: The system continuously validates its own HTTP response headers against a rigorous, allow-list-based policy. It checks for the presence and exact values of critical headers like Content-Security-Policy, Strict-Transport-Security, and Permissions-Policy.
- Fail-Secure by Design: If any of the self-tests fail—either a misconfigured header or a failure to reject a hostile request—the application will immediately terminate. It is architecturally designed to prefer being offline over being insecure.
High-Assurance TLS
A hybrid TLS management system that provides two modes of operation: a fully automated, zero-touch mode for rapid deployment, and a client-managed mode for integration with existing Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). In both modes, all configurations are subjected to a suite of paranoid validation checks at startup.
The Problem it Solves: TLS misconfiguration is a primary cause of security breaches. Weak protocols, insecure ciphers, or invalid certificates can silently undermine the security of the entire system. A secure system cannot be built on a transport layer that is not actively verified to be secure.
The Payoff: A transport layer that is secure by construction, not just by convention. Our zero-touch system eliminates the risk of human error for managed deployments, while our paranoid startup validation provides a verifiable guarantee that the server will not run in an insecure state, regardless of the certificate source.
Technical Deep Dive
- Hardened by Default Protocol Suite: The server is hard-coded to enable only the strongest TLS protocols (TLS 1.2 and 1.3) and is architected to use a curated list of modern, secure cipher suites. All older protocols, like SSLv3 and TLS 1.1, are disabled at the code level, eliminating the risk of a downgrade attack.
- Paranoid Startup Validation: Before accepting any connections, the server subjects its own TLS certificate to a suite of rigorous checks, including full chain-of-trust validation, online revocation status checking, and enforcement of minimum key strengths (e.g., RSA >= 2048 bits). A failure of any check is a fatal error that prevents the server from starting.
- Zero-Touch Certificate Lifecycle (Default): In the default mode, SynthGrid securely and automatically manages its own TLS certificate lifecycle. SynthGrid proactively renews the certificate before it expires without requiring any human intervention, eliminating the risk of expiration-related outages.
- Client-Provided Certificate Support: For environments with established PKI, SynthGrid can be configured to use a client-provided certificate. SynthGrid will load the certificate from a secure local path, allowing for full integration with existing security and compliance workflows while still benefiting from our paranoid validation.
Menhir: A Verifiably Secure API Architecture
Our API architecture is built on a foundation of verifiable security. It combines our strict, fail-fast network server, Menhir, with an F# implementation that makes it a compile-time error to forget a security check. Authorization is then handled via a capability-based model, where a user literally does not possess the code to perform an unauthorized action.
The Problem it Solves: The vast majority of security vulnerabilities are not sophisticated attacks; they are simple programmer errors—a forgotten authentication check, a loosely parsed input. In complex systems, these errors are inevitable. For a high-assurance system, they must be made impossible.
The Payoff: An API that is secure by construction, not just by convention. By leveraging the F# compiler to enforce our security policy and providing capabilities instead of checking permissions, we eliminate an entire class of common vulnerabilities. This provides a level of assurance that is simply unattainable in conventional web frameworks.
Technical Deep Dive
- Compiler-Enforced Authentication: We use F#'s active patterns to partition all incoming requests into authenticated or unauthenticated states. Because pattern matching must be exhaustive, it is a compile-time error to define an API endpoint without explicitly assigning it an authentication level. A forgotten security check is a bug our compiler will not allow.
- Capability-Based Authorization: Our system uses a capability-based security model. Instead of checking a user's permissions before performing an action, the system provides the user with a set of 'capability' objects that contain only the functions they are authorized to call. An unauthorized action is not just rejected; it is impossible to express.
- Fail-Fast Network Validation with Menhir: Our first-principles web server, Menhir, is ruthless. It validates all incoming network traffic against a strict subset of the HTTP specification. Any deviation—a malformed header, an invalid character—results in the immediate termination of the connection. The server does not tolerate ambiguity.
Proactive Analysis Engine
A dedicated background AI agent that intercepts and analyzes every single business event—from emails and sales orders to CRM updates and calendar invites—in real-time. It uses a structured, multi-part scorecard to grade each event for security, financial impact, urgency, and social context.
The Problem it Solves: Businesses are drowning in a firehose of information. Critical signals are missed, and security threats are buried in the noise. Standard AI systems are passive tools that wait for you to ask the right question. This is too slow and too late.
The Payoff: This is the difference between a tool and an intelligence. SynthGrid doesn't just present you with a stream of data; it presents you with a stream of triaged, pre-analyzed intelligence. It is a proactive system that acts as a built-in chief of staff, ensuring you never miss a critical threat or opportunity.
Technical Deep Dive
- Real-Time Event Triage: Every business event is immediately intercepted and passed to the analysis engine. There is no batching, no delay. The analysis is performed in real-time, as the event occurs.
- Structured Analysis Scorecard: SynthGrid performs a deep, 11-part analysis of each event, including a full Security Assessment, a Financial Impact analysis, and a Time Urgency evaluation. This is a comprehensive intelligence briefing.
- Contextual Prompt Engineering: To ensure the LLM performs this analysis with the correct context and intent, the system prompt is dynamically generated with specific instructions based on the source of the event, the user it belongs to, and the current state of the system.
Extensible Analytics Platform
An AI-powered analytics platform built on our secure Data Science Engine. Users can ask for a report in natural language, and the AI will write and execute the Python code to generate it. Crucially, this platform can be extended to query any internal or third-party data source via our open Module Service Protocol.
The Problem it Solves: Business intelligence is a bottleneck, and data is often siloed in proprietary internal systems. Standard BI tools are rigid and cannot answer novel questions, and they struggle to integrate with the long tail of custom internal applications.
The Payoff: The end of the data bottleneck. Any user can ask a complex business question and receive a rich, data-backed report that synthesizes information from across your entire data ecosystem—from Salesforce to your own internal microservices. This turns ad-hoc analysis into a reusable, automated, and extensible intelligence library.
Technical Deep Dive
- Natural Language Report Generation: Users can request a report in plain English. The AI uses the full context of the task to write and execute a Python script that is perfectly tailored to the user's specific, ad-hoc question.
- Extensible via Module Service Protocol: The platform is designed to be extended. Any internal or third-party service can be exposed as a secure data source by implementing our simple, open Module Service Protocol. This allows the AI to incorporate your own proprietary data into its analysis.
- Secure, Sandboxed Execution: All AI-generated code is executed in our Verified Sandbox. This allows us to safely query and process data from both trusted and untrusted sources without compromising the security of the system.
- Multi-Modal & Multi-Source: The engine can generate reports that include not just text and tables, but also rich, interactive data visualizations. It can synthesize data from multiple, disparate sources—like your CRM, ERP, and your own custom modules—into a single, unified report.
SarsenDB: A GDPR-Compliant Document Store
SarsenDB is one of the four purpose-built storage engines that make up The Vault. It is a high-performance, in-memory database that persists each document to its own encrypted file on disk. This one-file-per-document architecture is a deliberate choice to enable true, physical data deletion.
The Problem it Solves: Most databases, especially append-only or log-structured ones, do not truly delete data; they simply mark it as deleted. This is a major compliance risk for regulations like GDPR, which require the physical erasure of user data upon request.
The Payoff: Effortless GDPR compliance. When a user exercises their 'right to be forgotten,' we can cryptographically prove that their data has been physically and irreversibly deleted from the system by simply deleting the corresponding file. This is a level of compliance that is difficult and expensive to achieve with traditional databases.
Technical Deep Dive
- Verifiable Physical Deletion: Each document is stored in its own AES-256 encrypted file. To comply with 'right to be forgotten' requests, we simply delete the corresponding file. This provides a simple, robust, and auditable mechanism for the physical erasure of data.
- In-Memory Performance: The entire database is held in memory for microsecond-level data access. All writes are immediately persisted to the encrypted disk cache, providing both high performance and data durability.
- Asynchronous Startup: The database is loaded into memory on a background thread at startup. This allows the application to become responsive as quickly as possible, without waiting for the full dataset to be loaded from disk.
SynthCRM: An Integrated CRM
SynthCRM is a complete, built-in customer relationship management system. It is a first-party component of SynthGrid, designed for organizations that do not have an existing CRM and need a simple, secure, and AI-ready solution.
The Problem it Solves: Many organizations run on spreadsheets and email, which are inefficient, insecure, and disconnected from their AI tools. Third-party CRMs are often too complex and expensive for their needs.
The Payoff: A simple, powerful CRM that works out of the box. SynthCRM provides all the core functionality needed to manage customer relationships, and because it's a native part of SynthGrid, it's seamlessly integrated with the AI from day one. It's the perfect starter CRM for an AI-powered organization.
Technical Deep Dive
- AI-Ready Data Model: The SynthCRM data model is designed from the ground up to be a rich data source for AI analysis. It includes not just standard CRM fields, but also unstructured data like comments and activity logs, and even a 'sentiment' score for each interaction.
- Real-Time Integration: Every change to a customer record is broadcast as a business event, allowing SynthGrid's Proactive Analysis Engine to triage and analyze new information as it happens.
- Secure by Default: SynthCRM is built directly on our high-performance Vault architecture. This means that all customer data is encrypted at rest and protected by the same high-assurance security model as the rest of SynthGrid.
Verified Sandbox
A sandboxed execution environment for AI-generated code. Before any code is run, each sandbox instance is automatically tested to ensure its security controls are functioning correctly.
The Problem it Solves: Sandboxing untrusted code is a standard security practice, but a static configuration can fail silently. You need constant verification to ensure the isolation is actually working as designed.
The Payoff: A reliable and verifiable guarantee of isolation for AI-generated code. By testing the sandbox at the moment of creation, we ensure that the security controls are not just configured, but are actively and correctly enforced for every single task.
Technical Deep Dive
- Dynamic Security Verification: Every sandbox instance is dynamically tested upon creation. The system runs a suite of automated tests designed to escape the sandbox's restrictions (e.g., filesystem writes, network access). If any test succeeds, the environment is immediately destroyed. Code is only ever executed after the sandbox has passed this verification.
- Hardened by Default: The sandbox provides a heavily restricted environment built with standard containerization technologies. The execution environment has no network access, a read-only filesystem, and is completely isolated from the host system and other sandboxes.