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A papier-mache stop-motion film: a young detective in a mustard coat tails a grey-haired man in round spectacles through a day in a paper city, from behind a gas lamp, through a hole in his newspaper at a cafe, up out of a hedge crowned with doves, past a bus stop and up a stack of boxes to the lit window where the man reads at night; then he turns to the camera and opens his notebook, every line marked in yellow highlighter.

Trace · the sourced archive behind our writing

Trace

Everything we publish for a client is built from what the client actually read, saved and highlighted. Trace is the system that makes that possible, and provable.

Trace

Everything we publish for a client is built from what the client actually read, saved and highlighted. Trace is the system that makes that possible, and provable.

What happens when you read

You read as you already do. When something matters, you save it from your phone, your browser or your inbox, and highlight the sentence that made it matter.

What the archive keeps

Every saved page is captured in full when you save it: the text, the layout, a screenshot, the address and the time. If the page is later deleted, edited or put behind a paywall, your archive keeps the version you read, so a citation to it still opens.

Each item is summarised, tagged and made searchable in full. Nothing you save is sent to an outside AI service.

What a draft is made of

Every claim in a draft points to the item in your archive it came from: a number to the page it was read on, a position to the highlight where you first marked it. The draft you approve shows these.

An example. Saved 14 May, 23:41. Reserve Bank of India, guidelines on default loss guarantee in digital lending. Highlighted: "shall not exceed five per cent of the amount of that loan portfolio."

Three days later, under the client's name: The 5% cap on first-loss guarantees does not protect borrowers. It protects the banks that were never at risk.

What is not automated

We use AI in production: to transcribe, to summarise what you have saved, to collate research and to make the first rough cut. It never originates. The claim, the position and the sentence are made by a person who has read your archive and argued with you about it. There is no draft on this site or under a client's name that a model wrote and a person approved.

Whose archive it is

Yours: private to you, held in your own account, and readable by us only for the work you have engaged us for. It is exportable in full at any time, in open formats, and if you stop working with us you keep it. We do not train anything on it, pool it across clients, or keep a copy after you take it.

Try it

Select any sentence in the paragraph below, the way you would while reading.

The Reserve Bank's guidelines on default loss guarantees in digital lending cap the guarantee at five per cent of the loan portfolio. The cap is described as a consumer protection measure. Whether it protects borrowers or the banks is the argument a client might make from it.

    You read, you mark what matters, and the archive keeps the page and your highlight together. The mark in the draft is the receipt.

    Where to start

    Trace sits under the work for leaders: every executive voice post and every argument starts from it. Most of that work begins with a positioning audit.

    hello@theopinion.studio

    We reply within two working days, and if the answer is no we say so in writing.