The pointer, the dial, and the reading.

The kernel

A gnomon is the rod of a sundial — the part that casts the shadow. It does not announce the hour. It reveals where the shadow falls. The reader tells the time.

It points; you tell the time.

That sentence describes the product. Regulations are the light. Your portfolio is the dial. Gnomon is the pointer. When a CBP ruling, a BIS amendment, or an FTA renegotiation moves the light, the shadow on your portfolio moves with it. Gnomon surfaces what has changed. Your team decides what it means.

The two halves — monitor and mirror

Gnomon does two things continuously, and the value comes from holding them together.

Monitor. The regulations. BIS amendments to the Commerce Control List. CBP rulings. WCO HS revisions. FTA renegotiations. Entity-list updates. UK Office for Trade Sanctions Implementation (OTSI) actions. EU dual-use updates. We parse the regulatory record as a continuous feed and hold it as the current state of the world.

Mirror. Your portfolio. HS, COO, and ECCN classifications for the products you make and ship, held as a live reflection of where each one stands against the current regulatory state. Not a copy of your master data — a reflection of the classification-relevant attributes that drive the determinations.

Either half alone is useful. Together they are something different: a continuous reading of where your classified portfolio sits relative to a regulatory record that does not stand still.

The five-stage flow

Engagement runs in five stages. The first is one-off; the rest run continuously.

i. Initial mirror set-up

Your team provides the existing classified portfolio — products, classification-relevant technical specs, BOM at the level needed for COO and ECCN, manufacturing locations, current classifications. Gnomon ingests with strict data minimisation. Target for portfolios under 5,000 SKUs: two weeks to a first conflict report.

ii. First conflict report

Gnomon re-evaluates your full portfolio against the current regulatory state and surfaces every disagreement between its reading and your existing classifications. Each conflict comes with the regulatory basis for the disagreement — the specific CBP ruling, BIS amendment, or WCO note — alongside a confidence score and recommended next action.

iii. Customer review and change control

Your compliance team reviews each conflict. You approve, override, or escalate. For approved changes, you raise your internal change request through your normal change-control process. Gnomon never amends a classification on your behalf. The verdict, the audit trail, and the regulatory accountability remain yours.

iv. Continuous delta feed

Once the mirror is established, your systems feed Gnomon the deltas as they happen — new products from R&D or PLM, component changes, software and firmware revisions, country-of-manufacture changes, supplier substitutions. Each delta triggers re-evaluation. You see only what has changed materially.

v. Regulatory wash

When BIS amends the CCL, when CBP issues a new ruling, when an FTA renegotiates, when the entity list updates, when WCO publishes HS revisions — Gnomon washes the affected products through the model. Drift surfaces as conflicts. Your team reviews. The cycle continues.

The data boundary

For many technology companies, technical specifications are the company. The data boundary has to be defensible.

Gnomon takes only what's classification-relevant: technical specifications, bill-of-materials composition at the level needed for COO and ECCN determination, manufacturing locations, software and firmware versions, existing classifications, and reviewer override history.

Gnomon does not take customer names, end-customer information, contract values, unit pricing, sales volumes, profit margins, sourcing strategies, internal roadmaps beyond the technical detail needed, marketing positioning, or competitive intelligence.

The principle: what your customs broker already holds, nothing more.

This boundary maps to what you already share with your broker, freight forwarder, and customs authorities. It anchors the data position in something existing and concrete, rather than abstract privacy promises.

What you'll see and what we'll never claim

You'll see drift before it bites you in an audit. You'll see the regulatory evidence behind every flag. You'll see the override history so the model can learn from your team's judgement.

You will not see Gnomon claim that AI gets classification right every time, that drift can be predicted with certainty, or that the audit defence is something we can take off your hands. The reading is yours. We hold the dial steady so you can read it.

Where Gnomon runs

Today, on Pragticality-managed infrastructure for demo and design-partner work. As the product matures, deployment will follow customer demand — including options where Gnomon runs inside the customer's own environment for the most security-sensitive cases. The architecture is built with this progression in mind from day one.

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