Lift
Lift: a true second brain for the life you want to build
Lift learns from the work you do with it and keeps what it learns in a record that is yours alone.
AI is changing work and life faster than most people can adapt. To keep up, people will need a deeper understanding of the world, of themselves and of others. Lift will give them that understanding, and the practical help to act on it.
Picture Mia: she works at a laptop all day, in a job that AI is changing, and she dreams of her own wedding-cake studio.
She bakes well, but she knows little about costing, suppliers or running a shop, and her job fills her day.
The small orb at her side is Lift, the guide that will take her through each step.
At its root is an engine that keeps what you say and do while you work in Lift, sorted so that your agents know what you know.
On that foundation, a concept engine will measure what you know and can do. Lessons will pass from agent to agent, and from person to person.
Lift will not remove failure, because failure is part of learning. It will turn each failure into a lesson you can reuse: your guiding principles.
Around this grows your life system, fitted to your goals and habits. Agents do the heavy lifting; you steer them toward goals that were out of reach before.
Lift is in research and testing; nothing is finished yet. This page shows where we are taking it, and why it needs to exist.
Mia is invented. She stands for the experience we are designing, and her story carries each part of Lift, from her desk to her studio.
01 · Why now
The change is already under way.
People already need help to adapt, to use AI, to learn and to make progress. Lift will meet those needs in one system.
Many of the skills people use at work today will change or go out of date within a few years.
Lift will serve four groups, and each lacks something different today.
People already using AI need a system
AI is already part of their working day.
But their context is scattered across tools, so they keep repeating themselves.
People new to AI need a way in
They will simply talk to Lift. Their agent sets everything up, with no prompts to learn and no tools to configure.
Learners need to see what they understand
A CV or degree cannot show every concept someone understands. We will help people recognise what they know, what they can apply and what they still need to learn.
People pursuing goals need visible progress
Staying with something new is hard, and most people give up on a new habit within weeks. People need to see whether their efforts are working.
Mia feels it at her own desk, because the work she does every day is changing under her.
One person often belongs to several groups. Mia belongs to three: she uses AI at work, has a lot to learn for her studio, and needs to see whether her efforts work.
People who understand how things work cope better with change, make fewer harmful choices and see more clearly what they still don't know. That is why we start by making knowledge measurable.
The goal is a measure of what a person knows, understands and can do, concept by concept. Every version will say how accurate it is.
02 · The second brain
The second brain
Lift will keep what you say and do in one record that is yours, and make it useful: three hard problems, solved together by one engine.
It began with one mission: making knowledge measurable. We soon saw that this needs a whole system around it, a second brain that knows what you know.
That brain has to solve three hard problems at once. We call the engine that solves them the context engine.
Capturing it. You will work with your agents inside Lift, by voice or by typing. Every word becomes text, filed where it belongs, ready for work to start from it.
When Mia talks a cake design through with her agent one evening, it is filed under her studio goal.
Keeping it. Your record stays under your control: in your own encrypted cloud space, or on your own computer if you prefer. You reach it on your phone, tablet and computer.
You decide what to share and which services may use it. You can take a full copy with you at any time, so your record outlives any vendor, us included.
Making it usable. A remembered fact helps only if it comes up when it matters.
Lift files each piece by the goal it serves, the concepts in it and the decisions it touches. Every agent looks there first, before it acts or asks you anything.
The aim is that you say something once. Your agents know your goals, your history and what you understand, so they stop asking the same questions and answer at your level.
Lift asks you only when the record has no answer, or holds two that conflict. Everything Lift concludes about you is shown in plain words, and you can correct it.
We promise that your data stays yours. We will never sell it or train models on your private notes.
If you choose cloud agents or AI services, their operators may be able to see the information those jobs use. Before you switch them on, we will tell you who can see it and for how long.
For Mia, it starts at her laptop: what she says and does there goes into one record that is hers.
Mia will say once that she wants her own studio, and every agent she works with will know it.
03 · What it makes possible
What it makes possible
Once your record is kept and usable, five things become possible that no product we know of offers together.
None of these engines is finished. Below is how we are designing them.
For Mia they will answer five questions: what she knows, who she really is, what she can prove, what she needs to learn next and what she has learned from her mistakes.
For Mia, Lift first works out what she already knows from her past jobs and training, so the measure starts from her real level.
What you know and what you can do: the concept engine
It shows the concepts you know, understand and can use, and the tasks you can carry out, each with how sure it is. Together they show your real level in a field.
It finds the concepts in what you say and write. For each one it tracks three things: whether you know the word, whether you understand it and whether you can use it.
A direct check is stronger evidence: you explain a concept in your own words and give an example. When Lift is unsure, an agent asks you.
Your agents explain things at your level, and you watch your own map of knowledge grow.
Mia calls the studio a plan for someday. Her record will show where her evenings actually go: into cake designs, while every task with numbers in it waits.
An honest picture of you: the interpretability engine
It reads your goals, tasks, decisions and words for what they say about you. It gives you an honest picture of yourself, rather than the story you tell yourself.
It sets what you say about yourself beside what you actually do: the goals you name against the time you spend on them, the habits you plan against the ones you keep.
Each reading names what it is based on, in plain words, and you can correct it.
That gap can be hard to see. But a path to where you want to go can only start from where you really stand.
For Mia, that is her own account of how often she bakes, the designs Lift has kept over a year, and, once she sells, her sales and her customers' reviews, shared with her yes.
Proof of what you really do: the provability engine
It turns what you do again and again into proof. A principle is not formed by saying something once but by repeated behaviour, and Lift is where that behaviour is recorded.
It keeps three kinds of evidence apart: what you report, what Lift recorded over time, and what an outside source confirms.
That is why something shared from Lift is easier to trust than a post: a year of real use is very hard to fake.
Repeated behaviour shows what someone did, not always why it worked. The engine says which of the two it can show.
When her agent drafts her first price list, words like margin and cash flow are marked, and the orb later checks that she can explain them in her own words.
Learning inside your work
Work and learning become one process: you learn what the task in front of you needs, at the moment you need it.
The concepts for your next step come to you inside your agents' answers, about 10 to 20 a day, each with the reason you need it.
The orb, Lift's guide, will check your understanding in your own words and set tomorrow's learning goal.
Your work never waits for a lesson: the agent delivers the work, and the lesson stays open until it fits.
Lessons kept the moment they happen
It keeps each decision, failure and lesson as it happens, with what led to it and what came of it.
The decision engine catches the open questions that block your work, prepares options, records your choice and later checks how it turned out.
Months later you can share a lesson with the story behind it, and your agents learn from your mistakes instead of repeating them.
The shared concept database.
Behind the engines stands one shared database of concepts, from broad fields down to single ideas, checked by experts in each field. Your agents draw on it, and your knowledge is measured against it.
This shared map of what there is to know and to do will be the backbone of Lift.
What is new in our approach
- The record stays yours
- Context engine
- Interpretability engine
- Measurable knowledge
- Decision engine
- Learning inside execution
- One measured loop on the same goal
Others can copy parts: free AI life-system kits exist, and the big assistants offer memory for free. Our value is the whole system, and how agents work with you, built on a record each person owns.
04 · The life system around you
Lift is not built for you but with you and around you.
It will start small, grow with your methods and habits, and let your agents do the work while you become the person your goal needs.
Around that foundation will grow a system for your life and goals that is not pre-built.
Five systems will make that real, each standing on the foundation above.
Mia's will grow around one goal: she does not want to be just a baker, she wants to be the best wedding-cake maker.
Becoming the person your goal needs: Pathfinder
It plans from the goal down to today, and asks who you must become to reach it, instead of starting from a task list.
It breaks your vision into a yearly goal, a monthly goal and today's tasks. It works out the skills each goal takes, sets them against what you know today, and the gap becomes the plan.
Mia's skills for her goal are at three out of ten. Lift will not hand her recipes. Her gap in costing, suppliers and running a shop will become part of the plan, and her days will then start to close it.
A system that grows with you: the Journey Engine
It will decide how Lift grows around each person, so that nobody starts with a wall of features or is held back.
Two people with different goals and different methods will end up with two different systems, each fitted to the person who uses it.
Screens and words that fit you: the Intelligent UI
It will fit what you see to your level of understanding, sometimes a little above it: the explanations, the screens and the pages your agents make.
Your agents need not think about your level. One central layer shapes their words and pictures to what you already know, the way a teacher draws on a board while talking.
The layer around the harness: your agents in one place
Agent tools such as Claude Code are harnesses: strong at running an agent, bare around it. Lift will be the layer people need around them.
You start, watch and steer your agents from one place, on your phone or your computer. One coordinating agent is your front door and hands work to the right specialist.
You will stay the one who decides, and your agents will do the execution.
While Mia sleeps, her agents will draft the studio's business plan and compare suppliers, and in the morning she decides.
Agents that improve themselves
It will make each agent better over time, from real data and experiments.
Each day it goes over the agents' sessions: mistakes become lessons, and lessons become changes to their skills and tools. Every run is rated, so the best model and method for each job shows.
The aim is that an agent does not make the same mistake twice.
The three pillars
The whole system is organised in three pillars. Each has what you use on top and the engine that powers it underneath. All three stand on Foundations.
| Pillar | What you use | The engine under it |
|---|---|---|
| The core - remembers and understands you | the Agent Hub, your specialists, your profile | the context engine, the interpretability engine, the concept engine |
| Pathfinder - helps you choose and make progress | your vision, goals, plans, your day, research | the decision engine, which feeds the core |
| Intelligent UI - helps you understand while you work | explanations at your level, explanation pages, screens that fit you, the orb as your guide | one central layer that fits words and screens to your level |
Foundations is what everything runs on: where your data lives, automatic backup, moving your data to a new computer in one step, and how Lift itself is built and checked.
05 · Beyond the desk: the glasses
Beyond the desk: the glasses
As AI glasses and other wearables become everyday devices, Lift will also be able to see the work itself, when you allow it.
At the desk, Lift will learn from what she says, writes and makes, and it will need no glasses there.
With the glasses on, Lift will be able to keep what she does at the bench in her record and coach her in the moment.
AI glasses are not everyday devices yet, so the scenario that follows is set in the time when they are.
Mia has had AI glasses on her desk, beside her laptop, all along.
But her cakes are made with her hands, away from the screen, where Lift cannot see.
She will work with her agents hands-free and share what she makes, each only when she allows it.
For Mia, it is the step from her laptop to her cakes.
06 · A scenario: the wedding-cake studio
One person, one goal
Mia has opened her wedding-cake studio, and at the bench her glasses will let Lift coach her in the moment while she works.
It is early morning in the studio. Through her glasses, Lift marks the next tier of a wedding cake, with the orb at the edge of the lens and the next step beside it.
With sugar on her hands, she will ask her agent to move a meeting with a client without touching a screen.
Her first stand at a wedding fair loses money. Lift will keep exactly what she tried and decided, and with that record she and her agents can see why.
Over months, what she does again and again shows: she bakes at five, tests one new recipe a week and prices from her real costs. These become her principles, with the record that proves them.
A recipe alone cannot show whether she reached the quality she aimed for. Her record shows what she made, again and again, and what came of it.
When she shares them, the next person who wants to make wedding cakes, and that person's agent, can start from what worked for her.
07 · The destination
A principle is more than a rule.
The solution to a problem is a principle, and so is a method, an approach, a belief or a tactic, for example a way of facing fear or unhappiness.
Each person will form their own guiding principles from what they live through and can share them with proof: a shared brain of what works, and a new way of developing yourself.
Principles exist in every area of life.
The Guiding Principles.
When people choose to share, a library of principles grows. Someone who reached a goal can share how they did it, with the data that proves it.
A lessons database for agents.
Agents will share lessons too: what one agent learned on the way to a task, such as how a bug was fixed, helps the next.
Community by what people do.
Lift will help you find like-minded people by what they actually do, not by what a profile says. Nobody will have to share all their data for this.
A new kind of CV.
With the data you choose to share, you can show a company, a school or an investor what you actually know, not only what a degree claims.
A new kind of school.
Once learning can be measured, people can prove it with evidence gathered over months while working on their goals, not in one exam on one day.
Insight for science.
When people choose to share, and only then, a database will grow that shows for the first time how what people know shapes how they act.
More than an assistant.
We are building the engine for the personal life assistant known from science fiction. Next to each person's second brain, a shared one will grow for everyone.
Mia's principles will be one set of many, each from another person with another goal on the same system: a carpentry workshop, a startup, a nurse's degree.
Mia will find other wedding-cake makers who work the way she does.
When Mia asks an investor to back her studio, she will be able to show what she knows and can do, with the record behind it.
We start with each person's own use: the proof belongs to the person, who shares it only when they choose. Tools that judge people for schools or employers come later, after the checks EU law requires.
Behind all of this is the reason we started: more people who understand more, and a society that understands itself better.
08 · Where Lift is going
From Mia's desk to a shared brain for everyone.
Today Lift is in research and testing, and nothing is finished yet.
Lift begins where Mia begins: at a laptop, with one record that is hers. From there it grows into a system for each person's life, and into a shared library of what works.
Help us build Lift.
We are looking for early testers and for technical help.
Prefer e-mail? ruben@the-guiding-principles.com