About
Who makes this
Northbeams Labs is the research imprint of Northbeams. Northbeams pays for it, and the parent name is on every page here rather than tucked away.
What Northbeams sells
Northbeams sells software that shows a company which AI tools, agents and MCP servers are running on its computers, and lets it decide what those are allowed to do. It is a paid product for businesses, licensed per person, and sold both directly and through managed service providers.
That is the entire pitch on this site. Pricing, demos and product pages live on the company site: northbeams.com.
Who signs the work
Research and reports carry a named author, Joe McCormack, and a date. Tools ship under the Northbeams Labs name, in a Labs repository, because a tool needs a maintainer identity that outlasts one person.
What Labs holds itself to
These are the standing rules. If Labs breaks one, it has lost the only thing it was created for.
- Nothing is gated. No form, no email address, no account, on any tool or any report.
- The tools capture nothing. No phone-home, no telemetry, no upload.
- Every number is checkable. First-party figures say how they were collected and over how many machines. Other people’s figures are cited.
- Northbeams is disclosed, never buried. Independence here means editorial independence, not pretending we are strangers.
- Research voice, not sales voice. No urgency, no fear framing, no product pitch.
- Limitations ship with the work, alongside it rather than buried in it.
- Nothing goes out that would not survive a competitor checking it line by line.
- If Labs stops being maintained it gets archived with a clear note, rather than left to rot.
What this site does not do
- No newsletter, no notify-me, no gated download. To follow the work, use the Atom feed or watch the repository.
- No analytics, no cookies, no third-party requests of any kind. This site loads nothing from anywhere else, including fonts.
- No product links in the writing. One line in the footer, and this page.