What people ask, answered plainly.

What it surfaces is offered for people to check, never as a verdict. Every line links back to the words and the moment they came from. People can affirm, refine or correct how they were understood, and a speaker’s own correction stands: it is never overwritten, and it sharpens the answer key the engine is checked against. The tools for that are always there and never required.

Everything it surfaces is checked against the person’s own words, and the method itself is scored against an answer key of hand-labeled voices. The engine re-checks itself every morning and flags itself if accuracy slips. In head-to-head tests, our own engine beat earlier results from a frontier commercial model in six of seven cases.

No. Quotes are always the person’s own words, checked against what they said (translated faithfully when they spoke another language, with their original kept). A reply of a few words stands as it is, with nothing added on top. A recording where no one is really saying anything becomes a moment, not a voice. And when nothing speaks to a question, the engine says so rather than answer anyway.

It says so. SurfaceThread only brings up what people actually said. When no one in a body of knowledge speaks to a question, it tells you that instead of filling the gap.

The community does. Each body of knowledge has its own space and its own key, held by the people accountable for it. Nothing joins it until they say yes.

Only if you choose. Everything is private by default. A community can open its Mirror to the public, or share a picture of what it holds without anyone’s individual words, and go private again at any time: going private closes everything going public opened.

Yes. Ask the community’s organizer: any voice can be set aside at any moment, and it leaves everything at once. It can be brought back later, or removed for good.

No. SurfaceThread runs on its own engine. What you bring is never sent to outside AI, never sold, and never used to train anyone else’s models.

It can. For a group whose knowledge should never leave the room, SurfaceThread can be set up on a computer or server the group holds, working without the internet. It’s the same tool, held entirely by you. Talk with us about what it would take.

When young people take part, the organizer handles consent first, including a guardian’s consent for minors, before anything joins.

Recordings of any length, video, documents, scans and handwritten pages, spreadsheets, photos and art, whole folders. Conversations and meetings work too, and each person’s words stay their own.

Through doors your organizers make: a portal that asks your question, an open-seat poster with a QR code, or screens at an event. There is no public way for strangers to add to your space.

No. The Table is one body of knowledge the engine works with, and a living example of it at work. What you bring gets its own space under its own key. Exchanging with anyone else, the Table included, is a choice you make later, or never.

Yes. Many start privately with one body of knowledge and grow from there. Connecting with other bodies of knowledge is a separate choice, made later or never.

Every organization holds something different, so we scope it together. Tell us about your community.

Many. Captions appear in the language spoken. When someone spoke another language, their words are shown in a faithful English translation, and their own words are kept.

Yes. Where there is a recording, a quote plays from where it was said.

Songs come in as songs. When little is said in a recording, it’s treated as a moment, not counted as a voice, and the organizer can still choose to bring it in.

A Mirror of your body of knowledge: its weave, its portrait, where people meet and differ, the questions underneath, how it shifts over time. Writing tools that cite the voices they draw from, from a letter to decision-makers to a brief for funders, in print or PDF. And a printable toolkit: a zine, a field guide, a lesson plan, discussion cards and an exhibit kit.

Yes, any time, as JSON, CSV or text, with every source attached.

If you choose. Circles let communities hold their knowledge up to each other’s without merging, each deciding what it shares. Spaces like Collective Memory link whole worlds.