How it works

Grounded in sources. Checked against them. Logged.

ARGOS is built so an answer can always be traced to a real source and a decision can always be reconstructed. Here's the pipeline behind every response.

The answer pipeline

01

Curated, verbatim sources

The knowledge base is built only from official government legislation and regulator guidance, stored verbatim — never paraphrased or AI-generated. Each source carries its licence, so the corpus stays commercial-safe.

02

Hybrid retrieval

Your question is embedded and matched against the corpus with hybrid search — dense semantic similarity fused with keyword (BM25) ranking — then the strongest passages are re-ranked by an LLM for relevance.

03

Grounded synthesis + citation check

The answer is composed only from the retrieved passages and checked back against them. If a claim is not supported by a real source, it does not survive — so you never get a fabricated section number.

04

Tamper-evident logging

The question, the sources used, and the result are written to a SHA-256 hash-chained audit log. Any later edit breaks the chain, so the record is verifiable and defensible.

Screening

Deterministic first, AI where it adds value

Screening is layered so confident matches are instant and cheap, and the AI only works on the genuine gaps — getting smarter each time.

01

Deterministic match

Names are matched against PEP and sanctions records with explainable fuzzy scoring (including transliteration and cross-script), so confident hits resolve instantly — no AI spend.

02

AI adjudication for the gaps

When the database is unsure, an LLM adjudicator gathers web evidence and returns a reasoned PEP verdict with a confidence score and rationale — closing the data gaps that plain list-matching misses.

03

Self-learning register

High-confidence AI confirmations are promoted into a time-boxed provisional register, so the next screen of that name resolves instantly and for free.

04

Adverse media

An optional web lane surfaces adverse-media articles, gated for relevance, to add context without changing the deterministic verdict.

"If the context itself is fabricated, a citation checker offers no protection. So ARGOS never ingests AI-generated regulatory text — only verbatim official sources."

The design principle behind source-grounding.

See ARGOS on your own compliance questions

A short, tailored walkthrough — your jurisdictions, your screening cases, your audit requirements.