# Brendan Cody-Kenny: Substrate: be found, be understood, establish fit. Don't sell people the mechanism, make the mechanism work for them.

Technical Due Diligence for Software M&A https://sub.xiliary.com/p/brendancodykenny

### 2026-10-09 update #ai #composition #discovery #fit #substrate
Substrate: be found, be understood, establish fit. Don't sell people the mechanism, make the mechanism work for them.
- Orchestration and autonomy are engineering concerns. Like DevOps or blockchain they may get absorbed into larger platforms. The aim is minimum necessary autonomy for a dependable outcome.
- Composition matters more than orchestration. Capabilities get composed around the user's intent, and the scarce resource becomes judgement about what should happen and whether it was worth it.
- Index fund of self-promotion: Substrate provides representation, evidence and discovery. Members' own AI does the matching, evaluation and action, and pays its own inference.
- Matching is a computation. Opportunity is a condition in the world. Substrate makes capabilities and needs easier to find and assess.
- Five functions: persistent identity, structured evidence, independent discovery, a trustworthy public record, and fitness, which is relational and reciprocal. Test: does it beat a CV?

https://sub.xiliary.com/p/brendancodykenny/posts/64/substrate-be-found-be-understood-establish-fit-don-t-sell