Category desk, est. 2026
Category intelligence for securing-AI companies.
Your product owns one layer of the agent path. Your homepage still says “AI-powered security.” Field Note writes the sourced language that names your layer.
The offer
A weekly sourced signal, not blog posts.
Each week Field Note extracts what CISOs and founders are arguing about (agent identity, prompt injection, gateway control, who owns a failed agent) and turns it into citation-ready assets that name your layer.
You get a brief every week, a newsletter in your founder’s voice, posts cut from sentences already approved, and an article built so that a buyer, or the AI assistant the buyer asks, finds your layer named and sourced.
Fit
Who this is for, and who it is not.
Series A to C companies securing AI, roughly 15 to 80 people, a technical founder, one marketer or none. You own one layer and the homepage has not caught up with the product.
It is not for a company that cannot yet name its layer, and it is not for one already publishing its own sourced research. The first needs a product decision. The second does not need Field Note.
The swap test
If a sentence could sit on a competitor’s homepage, it does not ship.
Put another company’s name in the sentence. If it is still true, the sentence says nothing about you.
Northgate Labs delivers AI-powered security for the enterprise.
Does not ship Survives the swap: any of them could say it.
Northgate Labs records which agent acted, for whom, and with what permission.
Ships True only where the company owns agent identity.
Company names here are invented for the demonstration. The swap test is the floor: against a rival in the same layer, the sentence must also name something only your product does.
The source rule
No source, no sentence.
A claim is four things. Missing any one of them, it is not a claim and it is not written.
- A URL A public page you can open, not a summary of one.
- A date When it was published, so a stale number is labelled stale.
- A quote Under 30 words, copied from the page, that supports the sentence it sits under.
- A layer Which part of the agent path the claim is evidence for.
A scenario is labelled a scenario. A vendor survey is labelled a vendor survey, with its sample. Field Note’s own arithmetic is labelled as its own. Every asset is delivered with its sources listed, so you can check any line before your name goes on it.
The layers
Which layer is yours?
Ask who is responsible for an AI agent’s identity and access and the answer splits four ways: 28% say security, 21% development or engineering, 19% IT, 9% IAM (Cloud Security Alliance, 24 Mar 2026; a survey commissioned by Aembit, 228 responses). Field Note’s reading: before features, a buyer wants to know which part of the problem you own. This is for companies that can answer in one line.
| Layer | What it controls | The question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| agent identity | Which agent acted, for whom, and with what permission. | Whose agent was that? |
| AI gateway | The calls that pass between agents, models, and tools. | What went through, and what was stopped? |
| prompt-injection runtime | What an agent does after it reads hostile input. | Did it follow instructions it should have ignored? |
| usage control | Which AI tools may reach which business systems. | Who let that tool into our records? |
| shadow-agent discovery | The agents nobody registered. | How many agents do we actually have? |
Pricing
Three monthly tiers. The prices are the prices.
Signal
$1,500 / month
For the first two clients. $1,750 after that.
- 4 weekly signal briefs, 600–800 words, every claim sourced
- 1 newsletter in your founder’s voice
- 8 X posts in your founder’s voice
- 1 article, about 1,200 words, that answers one buyer question in its first lines, with every claim sourced
Authority
$3,500 / month
Everything in Signal, plus
- 1 whitepaper or buyer guide, about 3,000 words
- 1 comparison or alternative page
- A monthly check of 10 questions your buyers put to AI assistants: whether you are named, and which sources are cited
- 1 sales one-pager
Category
$7,500 / month
Everything in Authority, plus
- A second long asset
- A quarterly narrative refresh
- A rapid brief within 48 hours when a protocol or incident breaks
- 1 original signal report with a sourced market map
Two revision rounds on every asset. Capacity is capped at four long-form pieces a month in total, because one person writes them. Not included at any tier: design systems, paid distribution, joining your sales calls, CMS implementation, all-day Slack access, unlimited revisions. Incident coverage is Category only.
How it starts
No calls. Everything happens in writing.
No kickoff call, no weekly sync. One person runs Field Note, and the hours go into sources, not meetings. What you are buying is written language with its sources attached, so the work runs the same way: a document arrives, you mark it up, it comes back. Every message is one you can forward.
- Send your homepage URL. One email. If a note from Field Note brought you here, reply to that note instead.
- Get one sentence back. Your layer in plain words, for the spot where the generic line sits. If the homepage shows no single layer, you get one line saying so. Free, within three working days. One reply and one follow-up at most.
- Pick a tier, or do not. If you do, you receive a one-page start sheet: tier, start month, what ships each week, and a request for a few things your founder has already written. The voice comes from those pages, not from an interview.
- First brief, the first Tuesday of your start month. Invoiced on the 25th for the month ahead. Month to month: say stop by email before the 25th and no further invoice is sent.
Start with the URL. The reply is yours either way.
hello@hornbeckco.com