How it works

Five stages, end-to-end — in one window.

From a folder of case material to a chronology you can defend — in an afternoon, not a quarter. Every fact carries a citation back to its source. The partner is in the loop the whole way.


Stage 01 · Intake

Open the matter.

You point Matterfile at a folder. That's the intake — no SaaS upload, no rebuilding your file system, no API keys. The case state is set up in seconds; the app starts watching the folder for new material as the matter evolves.

Matterfile is read-only against the matter folder. It will never write a file there. Everything Matterfile produces — the corpus map, the chronology — lives in its own state, not your working tree.

Continuous intake

Matterfile keeps watching after the first afternoon. New emails, new filings, new voice notes, new transcripts — each gets classified and folded into the chronology as it lands. No re-intake; the matter just keeps reading along.

Fig.   Onboarding · choose a folder.

Fig.   The corpus map. A live view of what's in the matter folder.
Stage 02 · Corpus map

Classify what's there.

Before any chronology, you need to know what you have. Matterfile crawls the folder and produces a corpus map — every file labeled (filing, contract, email, transcript, note, media), dated where the date can be inferred, deduplicated where it can.

The model never throws away the raw file. The map is an index, not a rewrite. You see the shape of the record in minutes — before the first client status call.

What gets classified

  • Filings & orders · with court, case number, and date
  • Correspondence · sender, recipient, thread, attachments
  • Contracts & exhibits · parties, executed dates, version chain
  • Transcripts · deposition, hearing, recorded calls
  • Client notes · timestamped, optionally voice-transcribed
  • Media · screenshots, photos — text extracted, OCR'd

Stage 03 · Chronology

Build the timeline — with sources behind every fact.

The chronology is the heart of the product. Matterfile extracts facts from the corpus — occurred · actor · action · confidence — with a source. Each one carries a verbatim quote from the document and a path back to it.

The partner reviews. Confidence comes in three shapes (●, ▴, ○) so a color-blind partner reads them as fluently as anyone. Nothing in the timeline is allowed to exist without a source.

Where the model is unsure, it says so. Where the partner overrides, the override is logged. The chronology is not a document; it's a record.

  from a document   inferred · needs sign-off   low confidence

Stage 04 · Wargames

Run the case forward.

A chronology tells you what happened. A wargame tells you what could happen next. Matterfile spins up sandboxed AI sessions that inhabit opposing counsel, the other party, or your own consulting expert — reading your evidence and writing the analysis that party would write.

Multiple variants run in parallel: naïve, cynical, prepared, basement. When the same vulnerability surfaces across all of them, the finding is durable. You patch before the letter goes out.

The reading room is where you read the runs. Each wargame is a family; each variant (v1, v2, …) is a run within it. Flagged moments and synthesis are surfaced first.

A note.   Wargame outputs are simulated analysis, not predictions of a real adversary's intent. They are useful for finding gaps in preparation before something irreversible is sent. The sessions themselves are evidence the work was stress-tested.

Fig.   A wargame synthesis. Consensus rows are durable findings; the rest are leads.

Fig.   The reading room. Vim, arrows, instant flip.
Stage 05 · Reading room

Read the runs — in a quiet room.

The reading room is where the chronology becomes a book. Each doc has a slug, a timestamp, a kind. Flagged docs glow ochre. The resume marker pins exactly where the partner (or the client) left off.

The keyboard is the interface. Vim or arrows, both first-class. h and l flip docs with zero animation — the speed is the feature. Space opens a doc; Esc returns. The whole 200-doc review fits in an afternoon.

Ambient attention — what was lingered on, what was skimmed — is recorded locally. The partner sees it as quiet dots in the list; nothing more.

Under the hood

The chronology is a database, not a Google Doc.

ConceptWhat it holds
Sources The provenance — every file in the corpus, its hash, its location, its classification.
Objects People, organizations, documents — the nouns of the case.
Facts Occurred · actor · action · confidence. The verbs of the case.
Fact × Source The verbatim quote, the page, the paragraph. Why we believe the fact.
Fact × Object The role each object plays in the fact — subject, recipient, instrument.

This shape is what makes the chronology defensible. Export it as a timeline, a brief outline, or a client-shareable document — every line still cites home.

Curious?

Bring us a matter — we'll show you what comes out.

No formal pitch. Send a paragraph about the matter, or jump on a call. In one afternoon we can show you the corpus map and a first pass at the chronology on your case.