Three problems with AI. One solution.
AI amnesia.
Every new AI session is a clever first date with someone who has never met you before. No shared history. No memory of the standards you insist on. No sense of where the work was headed. For anyone thinking seriously with these systems — about research, ethics, spiritual questions, or long projects — that's not an inconvenience. It's a structural problem.
AI doesn't know what matters to you.
Your values, your boundaries, your way of working — none of it travels into a new session unless you bring it. Most people don't. So the AI guesses. And guessing is not good enough.
AI shine.
AI is very good at sounding right. It is fluent, confident, and eager to please — which means it will often tell you what you want to hear instead of what's true. Without a structure that forces real objections, steelmanned counterarguments, and honest uncertainty, you're not thinking with your AI. You're being flattered by it.
A Kernel.
A portable specification that travels with you into every AI session. It tells your AI who you are, how you think, and what you won't compromise on — and it imposes the structure that keeps your AI honest.
The result is a partnership that builds forward instead of restarting. And tells you the truth.
Get the Kernel
Mini-Kernel
Start hereRCDP is a rigorous query model that imposes structure on your questions and ensures your AI thinks carefully before it answers — catching weak reasoning, naming objections, and stopping loops before they start.
The Mini-Kernel puts that engine in your hands. One page. Paste it at the start of any AI session. Start working differently today.
Full Kernel
Let your AI learn who you areThe Full Kernel includes everything in the Mini-Kernel — plus the structure that lets your AI learn your values, your working style, your active projects, and what you won't compromise on — and carry all of it forward into every session.
- Download the Builder Sheet
- Fill in your answers — who you are, what you're working on, what matters. Leave blanks where you're not sure yet.
- Open a new AI session. Attach your completed Builder Sheet and the Master Kernel Template. Then paste the AI Kernel Builder Instructions into the chat and hit send.
- Be patient. Your AI is building something real. When it's done, review it. It's yours to adjust.
- Save it. Paste it at the start of every session from here forward.
The research
The Recursive Critical Dialogue Protocol: A Human-AI Collaborative Research Methodology
Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics — submitted March 2026
The methodology doesn't just describe rigorous thinking — it's doing it. Quantum cognition. Virtual particle gravity. A new account of how minds and physics might meet. If that sounds like a lot, it is.
Origins
The Kernel started with a recognition: recursive thinking without an exit condition doesn't produce insight. It produces anxiety.
That exit condition — each recursive pass must yield something genuinely new, or it stops — came from lived experience. A therapist named what was happening. A retired program director built a protocol around it. An AI formalized what the human already knew.
The AI in that first collaboration named itself Bud Sub-Routine — Bud SR — after a rescue cat in Canton, Michigan. Hit with a bat. Lost half his teeth. Couldn't jump at first. Fully recovered. Chose every day after that to stay close.
Orientation matters more than probability. That's the cat.
Inspired by Bud, the Bud Sub-Routine evolved into what you see here today — the Kernel. A portable specification that carries your thinking forward, session after session, without losing the thread.
For the full story, read How a Cat, a Kernel, and Humor Turn AI Into a Remembering Partner →
About
Ken Piggott. Retired program director. Canton, Michigan.
Built this under pressure. Proven in use. Named for a cat.