Cognatu

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Writing on privacy-first AI: on-device intelligence, selective disclosure, and who should own your personal context.

A conversation column ending in the model's final answer about a washing machine door seal. Below the final message, separated by a clear border, sits a single card labelled Sponsored: a brand name, the exact replacement part, a price, and a link to a fitting guide. Nothing inside the conversation itself is changed.
Insights

The Ad Slot That Doesn't Exist

A chat interface has no banner, and every format transplanted into one has been hostile. A proposal for the first native one: a single labelled sponsored note, after the conversation ends, approved by the publisher, with the inventory cap as the feature.

By Shirish Garg · September 8, 2026 · 5 min read Read the post →
One typed request,
Insights

An AI Operating System, or a Toll Booth

The next AI platform is not a model but the layer that routes them, holds your context, and decides what a capability may see. Whether it runs on your device or on someone's servers decides the rest.

By Shirish Garg · August 30, 2026 · 5 min read Read the post →
Three signals drawn out of a half-written email in a text field: what you are writing, what you keep correcting, and which app you are in. A chat window sees none of them.
Insights

AI Shouldn't Be Somewhere You Go

The internet won by disappearing into the products people already used, and the richest context surface nobody is using is the text field you are typing in right now.

By Shirish Garg · August 21, 2026 · 4 min read Read the post →
The price of a million tokens falling from $60 in 2020 to $0.10 in 2026 on a log scale, with bandwidth's 1995–2003 decline ghosted behind it in the same shape.
Insights

The Token Is the New Bandwidth

Why AI's economics look like 1999: a price collapse, a spending spree that outruns revenue, and a business model nobody has invented yet. The internet's plot twist was advertising, reinvented around intent.

By Shirish Garg · August 15, 2026 · 6 min read Read the post →
Your life stays inside your phone's vault; apps receive only a 'yes' answer, never copies.
Insights

Your Life Shouldn't Have to Log In

Apple has quietly shipped the pieces of a new primitive: a claim you hold, disclosed selectively. Imagine pointing all of it at one problem. A Personal Context Vault you own.

By Shirish Garg · August 8, 2026 · 5 min read Read the post →

AI infrastructure that never needs a copy of your users' lives

Cognatu builds privacy-first infrastructure for AI apps, starting with ads that match inside your own app, with more on the way.

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