Ways to work with us

Most analytical work runs well below what it could. The hours go on moving numbers, reformatting, chasing and redoing, and not on the thinking you trained for. Closing that gap takes time and an unusual mix of skills. You may have neither to spare. We have both.

Below are the ways to start, from one conversation to a whole piece of work. Each says what it is and who it is for, shows what it looks like in practice, and begins with a short, free conversation. Already know what you want? Choose and tell us.

A question to answer, once
A new or one-off piece of research: a paper, a report, a reanalysis.
Three offerings, one system
The Knowledge Tree Root to fruit
Most research is felled at harvest. The paper goes out, and what grew it, the reading, the data, the code and the decisions, is left to rot. A knowledge tree is the same structure kept alive on purpose, as linked plain text that you and an agent can both walk. It is half of this company's name, and these three offerings are its parts.
Take one, or grow the whole tree.
- The fruitWriting like LightningWhat you write, grown from everything beneath it.
- The rootsResearch ReconstructedWhat you have read, kept findable and citable.
- The trunk and branchesScience SuperchargedThe analysis, with a manifest that says what depends on what.
- For people who write to think
  Writing like Lightning
  The fruit
  Today
  Fifty chat windows in, you're still carrying summaries by hand from one to the next, and the writing keeps piling up.
  With us
  Your notes become one linked graph that the agent reads every time, so each new draft starts from everything you've already thought.
  Each new piece strikes a line through your linked notes. You choose where the line starts and what it has to touch. The draft that comes back is yours to fight with until it is yours to sign.
  For
  Academics, researchers and creative nonfiction writers whose material is notes, sources, interviews and drafts.
  You bring
  Your notes, wherever they live now, and something you need to write.
  You get
  An opinionated system, a masterclass and a template vault.
  Leads to
  Research Reconstructed, for the literature you build on, and Science Supercharged, for the analysis itself. Both grow from this one.
  Illustrative vignette
  A social researcher with forty interviews, a literature and a deadline
  An outline in an afternoon, not three weekends.
  How it goes
  The interviews are coded, the reading is done, and the notes live in six places. Every new paper starts from a blank page and a search through old folders. The first call hears what she writes, for whom, and where the notes are now.
  1. The notes move into one slip box, as linked plain text. Nothing is lost, and everything can be found.
  2. For each new piece she chooses where the line starts and what it must touch. The agent walks the graph and brings back a structure with its sources attached.
  3. She fights with the draft until it is hers. The argument and the voice stay her own. The legwork does not.
  What she stops doing: starting from a blank page, and chasing every connection the graph throws up. Each piece gets one line. The rest waits.
  Talk about Writing like Lightning The system, three short films and the sign-up ↑ All the ways to work with us
  Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.
- For people who build on other people's work
  Research Reconstructed
  The roots · Builds on Writing like Lightning
  Today
  Ask a chatbot for the source and it invents a reference, so you check every citation by hand anyway.
  With us
  Ask where a claim came from and get the paper and the page, every time.
  Papers, reports and PDFs taken apart into linked, machine-readable notes in your slip box: what each one claims, and on what evidence.
  For
  Academics, reviewers, policy researchers and anyone else who has to keep track of, interpret and carefully reference a body of publications.
  You bring
  Your library, wherever it lives now: PDFs, a reference manager, highlights, half-remembered reading.
  You get
  The literature as machine-readable notes in the same slip box that Writing like Lightning draws on, each claim tied to its source and page. The agent proposes. You verify. Nothing is cited that you have not checked.
  Illustrative vignette
  A lecturer with four hundred PDFs and a review article due
  Finding the paper takes seconds, not an evening. The reference list is checked as the review is written, not in its last week.
  How it goes
  The papers are in a reference manager, the highlights are in the PDFs, and the connections are in her head. She knows she has read the thing she needs, and she cannot find it. The first call hears what the review has to cover, and how she reads now.
  1. The library is taken apart. Each paper becomes a note: what it claims, on what evidence, and where. The reading she has already done becomes findable.
  2. The notes join her slip box, linked to each other and to her own ideas. Where two papers agree or contradict, there is a line between them, not a memory.
  3. When she writes, every claim carries its source and its page. She checks a reference in seconds, and she checks every one.
  What she stops doing: re-reading whole papers to find the one sentence she remembers.
  Talk about Research Reconstructed ↑ All the ways to work with us
  Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.
- For analysis that has to keep running
  Science Supercharged
  The trunk and branches · Builds on Writing like Lightning
  Today
  The model behind last year's report still won't run end to end, and the update means starting again.
  With us
  Every number traced to the code that made it, so next year's update is a rerun, not a rebuild.
  The way software teams keep their work alive, applied to research analysis: a manifest of what depends on what, from the raw data to the figure in the paper, with version control, specification before analysis and checks before publication.
  For
  Researchers and analytical teams whose analysis has to be maintained and developed, not just delivered: the recurring report, the living model, the paper due an update.
  You bring
  One analysis that matters, with everything behind it, however untidy.
  You get
  That analysis rebuilt to run again from source, with its manifest, and the pattern for doing the rest yourselves. It shares its foundations with Writing like Lightning: plain text, links, and an agent that reads both. A Conventions Codified map is a good way to choose the piece.
  Case study
  Jon's own 2020 paper, taken apart and regrown
  Two to three days, from a cold repository to new figures and two draft papers.
  How it goes
  In 2020 two colleagues and I published a paper visualising fertility trends in 45 countries, using data that ran to 2014 or 2015. By 2026 reality had moved on: there were about ten more years of data. I already had the code in a public repository, but didn't have much time, so I used a code scaffold to try to update the results to the new data.
  1. The published pipeline was frozen and tagged, byte for byte. The 2020 results stay reproducible whatever happens next, accessible as a tag in the repository.
  2. The old code was reviewed for errors, and fresh data pulled from the source databases. A validation report records where the databases had revised their own history since the paper.
  3. The same methods were re-run on the new data: I had predicted in 2020 that Norway would lose replacement fertility; the updated results showed my prediction was correct.
  4. Then I updated the materials with new measures and analyses: The age of peak fertility; the age beyond which further fertility becomes negligible.
  5. I drew up a manifest and a map of the pipeline to show what depends on what, for the human and for the agent alike.
  6. I drafted multiple new manuscripts: each speaking more directly to contemporary concerns about fertility trends; each more precise in its analysis, while less demanding of readers' ability to decode complex data visualisations.
  What I stopped doing: treating a published paper as finished. It is now something that can be run again when the data change.
  Talk about Science Supercharged ↑ All the ways to work with us
  Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.
Talk about The Knowledge Tree What a knowledge tree is, in four figures ↑ All the ways to work with us
Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.
Work you do again and again
Your team runs the same analyses and procedures every week or month. Make them faster, and right every time.
Three modules, one line
The Light Factory Lights on, people in the loop
The Light Factory turns the rules your work already runs on into a line that remembers them. People skim the SOP, pass the quiz and forget step 4.2 when it matters. The line applies every rule at the step it governs, checks every run, and puts a person at each decision that needs judgement.
Take one module, or build the whole line.
- The auditConventions CodifiedHow the work really runs, and what agents can safely take over.
- The rulebookProcedures ProofedYour procedures as a map that shows where they disagree.
- The lineManifest GainsThe repeated analysis, rebuilt to run the rules every time.
- Lightening heavy analytical workflows
  Conventions Codified
  The audit
  Today
  A four-hour job done by hand every month, and never the time to find out which parts a machine could take.
  With us
  You know which hours of the week an agent can safely take, and which work can stop altogether.
  Walk us through a workflow as it really runs, and we map it step by step: the graph that makes the graphs. Automating this way doesn't remove your judgement. It frees it for the questions that matter.
  For
  Analysts and analytical teams who suspect that much of the week is repeatable, and have never had the time to find out how much.
  You bring
  One or more real workflows: spreadsheets, scripts, copy-and-paste steps and all.
  You get
  A map of each workflow, marked with what to automate, what to keep in human hands and what to stop doing, and the check a person makes at each hand-over. It is ordered by time saved against effort, so you know where to start.
  Then
  Make the changes yourselves, or have us work alongside your team on the first one, with its checks and handover notes.
  Illustrative vignette
  A public health intelligence team of four, with a quarterly report
  Eight person-days a quarter become two. The six that come back go on the questions the report raises, which is the work the team was hired for.
  How it goes
  Every quarter, two people spend most of a fortnight moving numbers from extracts to spreadsheets to charts to a Word document. Everyone knows some of it could be automated. Nobody has had a free week to find out which part. The first call hears what the report is for, who reads it, and which steps people dread.
  1. They walk us through the last report as it was really made. The undocumented steps surface, including the ones only one person knows.
  2. We map every step and mark it: automate, assist, leave alone, or drop. The team sees its own work on one page, often for the first time.
  3. The report ranks each change by time saved against effort. The first change is small enough to make before next quarter.
  What they stop doing: three tables nobody has asked about in years.
  Talk about Conventions Codified Where are you now? Chatbot or do-bot, in eight questions ↑ All the ways to work with us
  Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.
- In development · For the rulebook nobody reads twice
  Procedures Proofed
  The rulebook
  Today
  Procedures grown by accretion. Two of them disagree, nobody is sure which wins, and the arguments are about footnotes.
  With us
  You find where the rules disagree before an auditor does, and every revision is checked against the rest.
  We read your standard operating procedures into a knowledge graph, organised by role, stage and dependency, where steps that lead nowhere show up as clearly as the contradictions.
  For
  Heads of quality, operations or compliance whose procedures have grown by accretion, and analytical teams in regulated work.
  You bring
  Your procedure documents. No client data is needed.
  You get
  The graph, a list of contradictions and gaps with where each one sits, and the checker.
  Talk about Procedures Proofed ↑ All the ways to work with us
  Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.
- In development · For the report that must be right every time
  Manifest Gains
  The line · Builds on Conventions Codified
  Today
  The report is two weeks old by the time anyone acts on it, and each run depends on someone remembering the rules.
  With us
  A pipeline that applies the rules at every step, every run. Where an error would be costly, the result is produced twice and checked before anyone sees it.
  We build the line from your procedures, rule by rule. A person signs off each decision that needs judgement.
  For
  Teams with a recurring report, model or submission that has to be right, auditable and on time.
  You bring
  The workflow, ideally after a Conventions Codified map, and the procedures it must follow.
  You get
  The pipeline, its checks and its manifest, run once with you and handed over to run again.
  Talk about Manifest Gains ↑ All the ways to work with us
  Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.
Talk about The Light Factory ↑ All the ways to work with us
Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.
How we deliver it
Every module, in either package, can be delivered any of these three ways. They run from the least of your time to the most capability left behind.
How the work is delivered
Three ways to work For any module, in either package
Choose by how much you want to be in the room. You can change between them from one piece of work to the next.
- Least of your timeGang of OneSend us the materials; we do the work in the hours agreed.
- Your time, liveWalk with UsA pair or small-group workshop on your own work.
- Most left behindScientific SupergroupsWe facilitate your own team of analysis, development and domain expertise.
- For the analysis you need done
  Gang of One
  Least of your time
  Today
  The analysis you need is parked behind everything else. Colleagues say yes, and then you do everything.
  With us
  Send the materials. The work comes back done in the hours agreed, and you can see how every number was made.
  One analyst directing a gang of agents works at a pace that used to need a team, with every step recorded.
  For
  People who need the work done, and to trust how it was made.
  You bring
  The materials and a clear statement of what is needed. We agree the scope and the hours before we start.
  You get
  The output, and the repository that produced it: code, specification, checks and a record of the decisions. Yours to rerun.
  Illustrative vignette
  The policy lead at a housing charity, with a report going out of date
  An update that would have waited for a funding round is done inside a month.
  How it goes
  The last report is still quoted, and its numbers are stale. The analyst who wrote it has moved on. There is budget for an update, not for a team. The first call hears what the update has to say, to whom, and by when.
  1. They share the old report, its data and whatever code survives. We build on their work, not on a guess at it.
  2. We agree a one-page specification before any analysis. Nobody is surprised by what comes back.
  3. Hand-over is the report and the repository behind it. Next year's update is a rerun, not a new commission.
  What they stop doing: commissioning each update from scratch.
  Talk about Gang of One ↑ All the ways to work with us
  Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.
- For learning by doing the real thing
  Walk with Us
  Your time, live
  Today
  You can get code out of a chat, but you can't see the next step, or how people who do this well actually work.
  With us
  Your real work, done together and live, talking through each step as it happens.
  Sessions run in a pair or a small group, on your own data and questions.
  For
  People who want the result and to know why each step is the way it is.
  You bring
  The work and your time in the sessions.
  You get
  The finished work, and people on your side who could do the next one.
  Talk about Walk with Us ↑ All the ways to work with us
  Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.
- For the sponsor with a question
  Scientific Supergroups
  Most left behind
  Today
  Everyone has been given an AI tool, and the process hasn't changed a tiny bit.
  With us
  Your analysts, developers and domain experts work one real question together, with us keeping it moving, and keep the way of working afterwards.
  We bring the practice and facilitate. Your team does the work.
  For
  Organisations with the three kinds of expertise already in house, and a question worth their time together.
  You bring
  The team and the question.
  You get
  The work, and a team that can run the next sprint without us.
  Illustrative vignette
  A volunteer working party, with a question from its board
  Months of meeting cycles become a few working sessions.
  How it goes
  The board has asked a question. Everyone on the working party has a day job, the meetings are six weeks apart, and the usual answer arrives in eighteen months. The first call hears the question, which public data could answer it, and where the answer has to land.
  1. Three seats are filled: a member who owns the question, an analyst, and an AI wrangler. Each does the part only they can do.
  2. A two-hour session starts from a specification and a code scaffold. The question owner steers as the work happens, not a month later in comments on a draft.
  3. The session ends with a referenced working note. There is something to react to after one meeting, not six.
  What they stop doing: meeting to agree what to do before the next meeting.
  Talk about Scientific Supergroups Watch the films ↑ All the ways to work with us
  Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.
Talk about Three ways to work ↑ All the ways to work with us
Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.
Learn the practice, or ask us
General training, a second statistical opinion, or something that fits neither route above.
For people who want to learn the practice
Two Doors
Today
There are a hundred courses on spreadsheets and almost none on working with AI agents, and the in-house training is two years out of date.
With us
Your team works with agents on its own workflows, safely and auditably, with materials to keep.
For analysts who have mostly met AI as a chatbot, the small kernel of software practice that makes working with agents safe, efficient and auditable. In regulated, evidence-driven fields, the auditability is the part that gets paid for. And in the other direction, for software developers, a grounding in statistical inference and decision science that lets you work with more clients and collaborators.
Door one
Adding tech to analysis. For statisticians, health economists, epidemiologists, demographers, actuaries, reviewers and researchers.
Door two
Adding analysis to tech. For developers who want to speak the language of the people whose work they build.
Proposed shape
A half day or a full day, in person or online, for a group small enough that everyone works hands-on. It can run entirely on public or synthetic data. Settled with you on the call.
You get
Teaching that starts from the concepts you already hold, worked through on a realistic analytical task, with materials to keep: the worked example, reusable instructions for the agent, and a checklist for reviewing its work.
Not sure
An eight-question self-assessment will place you.
Illustrative vignette
Door one. An actuary who has used a chatbot, and never a terminal
A monthly report that took three days takes one, and she can show a reviewer exactly how every figure was made.
How it goes
She pastes data into a chat window, gets a plausible answer, and cannot say how it was reached or reproduce it next month. She suspects there is a better way and that it involves things developers know. The first call hears what she produces, who checks it, and what she has tried.
1. Version control, taught through audit trails, which she already understands. Every change to her work has an author, a date and a reason.
2. An agent working in her files, not in a chat window. It does the implementation. She specifies, reviews and signs.
3. One real piece of her own work, rebuilt as the exercise. The training leaves behind something she uses, not a certificate.
What she stops doing: pasting data into a chat window and hoping.
Illustrative vignette
Door two. A developer whose clients are clinicians and statisticians
Fewer rebuilds, and clients who come back because he understood the brief first time.
How it goes
He builds what he is asked to build, and the requests arrive in a language he half follows: confidence intervals, confounding, intention to treat. He loses a week whenever he guesses wrong. The first call hears who his clients are and where the conversations break down.
1. The ideas behind the vocabulary: uncertainty, inference and bias, and what a decision-maker needs from a number. He can ask the question that saves the week.
2. Why analysts care about what they care about: reproducibility, audit and the cost of being wrong. His tests start to check what matters to them.
3. Enough to review, not to replace. He knows when to build and when to ask for a statistician.
What he stops doing: nodding through the meeting and guessing afterwards.
Talk about Two Doors Both doors, in full ↑ All the ways to work with us
Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.
For saying what you see clearly and robustly
Analytical Advice
Today
A reviewer questions the model, the journal asks whether you used AI, and there's nobody nearby to give a second statistical opinion.
With us
A second pair of statistical eyes before the reviewer's, and a view you can defend.
We turn substantive questions into statistical models, and models into decision rules: statistical inference as a formal language for expert judgement about an uncertain world, and for how the data should move a decision you can defend.
Or, if you are one analyst or researcher who wants to change how you work, guidance one to one that starts from where you are, not from the beginning.
For
Analysts, researchers and small teams. Some hold their own development or grant budget, and some are deciding whether to ask for one.
You bring
The question, and whatever exists so far: a protocol, a model, a draft, a referee's report.
You get
A considered written view, and a conversation about it. Or guidance over time, one to one.
Drawing on
Public health, regulatory submissions, health economics and outcomes research, demography, data visualisation, academic writing and decision science.
Illustrative vignette
A health economist at a small consultancy, three weeks from a submission
A week of circling becomes a decision in two days, with a trail a reviewer can follow.
How it goes
The model is built. Then a reviewer asks why survival was extrapolated with that distribution and not another, and the honest answer is that it was the default. The first call hears what the decision is, who will challenge it, and what changes if it goes the other way.
1. We read the model and the reviewer's comment. You do not explain it twice.
2. A written note sets out the options, what each assumes, and which we would choose. The reasoning is on paper, ready to lift into the response.
3. We talk it through. You defend the choice in your own words, not ours.
What they stop doing: re-running every alternative in the hope that one of them feels right.
Talk about Analytical Advice Free statistics course materials ↑ All the ways to work with us
Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.
For the one-person firm
Business Buddy
Today
Forget one email and the bill sits for a week. You're your own IT department, and nobody tells you which box you haven't ticked.
With us
Nothing waits on your memory. The assistant reads, files and chases, and keeps a record you can check.
Set up the way this business runs itself: private, on your own subscription, with no developer required.
For
Sole traders and owner-operators who are their own IT department and their own procurement.
You bring
Your mailbox, your calendar, and an honest list of the admin you put off.
You get
A set-up day on your own machine, a knowledge base that grows from your own email and notes, and a monthly check-in until it runs itself.
Case study
This company
About a day and a half of admin a week that the agent does and nobody else has to. More honestly, most of it would not have been done at all. The company's record of itself writes itself, growing and correcting over time. Knowledge Tree and Butterfly's business records are themselves a knowledge tree!
How it goes
Knowledge Tree and Butterfly was incorporated on 1 September 2026, with one member of staff, its founder-director, and no back office. From the first day an agent has kept the diary, read the mailbox, written up every conversation and chased what needed chasing, all in plain files on the company's own machine.
In its first eighteen days that came to 27 contact records, more than 130 logged contacts, six calls written up from their transcripts, and six briefing packs ready before first meetings.
1. Every call becomes a contact record: what was said, what was promised, and when to follow up. Nothing depends on our founder's sieve-like memory.
2. A daily sweep checks the calendar for clashes, missing travel time and meetings whose details disagree with themselves. Mistakes are caught before they cost a meeting.
3. Everything is plain text under version control. Nothing is locked inside a service we cannot leave, and every change can be undone.
Talk about Business Buddy ↑ All the ways to work with us
Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.
For something else
Client's Choice
Today
It fits none of the boxes, so it sits on the list of things you'll get to one day.
With us
Someone who thinks both analytically and laterally looks at it properly.
The offerings above are the work we expect to be asked for. They are not the limit of what we will take on.
For
Anyone with a problem that involves evidence, data or argument, and no obvious person to take it to.
You bring
The problem as it stands, however half-formed. A paragraph is enough.
You get
A straight answer on whether we can help. If we can, a proposal shaped to the work and not to a menu. If we cannot, our best suggestion of who can.
Tell us what you have in mind ↑ All the ways to work with us
Or write to hello@ktandb.co.uk, or call or WhatsApp +44 7533 954328.

There is excellent free material on working with agents, and we will gladly point you to it. What it cannot do is look at your work. Skill with these tools is personal, and one person's workflow rarely transfers to another. So think of us as a guide. Everything here starts from what you already have, and from what you want more time for, and builds the way of working that fits you.

Knowledge Tree and Butterfly began with a discovery. In October 2025, our founder, a statistician, met agentic AI: a model working inside what developers call a code harness, or scaffold. It changed how we think analytical work should be done, and how urgently.

Agentic AI has already changed software development forever. Most people who work with data and evidence, but don't write much code, haven't yet realised it is coming for their work too.

Our work is at the seam between the two: making the two sides understand each other, enough to work well together. We teach that directly, through two doors. The method has a name: the knowledge tree.

A proposed open workshop

Not everyone has a team or a training budget behind them. If enough individual analysts and researchers want one, we will run an open workshop: hands-on practice in directing an agent through a realistic piece of analytical work, on public or synthetic data, open to anyone who books a place.

It does not exist yet. There is no date, no venue, no price and no booking, and nothing here takes payment. It runs only if enough people say they want it. There are two ways to say so, and they mean different things.

Tell us you are interested. It commits you to nothing, and tells us there is someone to run it for.
Ask us to hold a provisional place. You expect to buy a place if the date and the price suit you. It is still not a booking: no money changes hands, and you can withdraw at any time.

I'm interested Hold me a provisional place

If it goes ahead, everyone who wrote hears the date, the place and the price first, and provisional places are offered before any others. If it does not, we will tell you that too. Both buttons open an email to hello@ktandb.co.uk and nobody else; your address is used to reply to you about this workshop, and deleted whenever you ask.

Conversations are starting now. Choose whichever offering is closest and use its button, or simply write.

hello@ktandb.co.uk

Ways to work with us

A question to answer, once

The Knowledge Tree Root to fruit

Writing like Lightning

Research Reconstructed

Science Supercharged

Work you do again and again

The Light Factory Lights on, people in the loop

Conventions Codified

Procedures Proofed

Manifest Gains

How we deliver it

Three ways to work For any module, in either package

Gang of One

Walk with Us

Scientific Supergroups

Learn the practice, or ask us

Two Doors

Analytical Advice

Business Buddy

Client's Choice

Where would you like to start?

Contact us

A proposed open workshop