Semantic Infrastructure Lab

Founder & Chief Architect, Semantic Infrastructure Lab

Scott Senkeresty builds infrastructure that makes complexity inspectable.

For over 40 years—from published work at age 13 to distributed systems at Microsoft to consulting and startups to semantic infrastructure—he's been solving the same problem: how do you turn dangerous black boxes into tools that empower people?

The Pattern

Early Achievement (1984)

At age 13, Scott published "Colorful Sprites" in Compute's Gazette (December 1984), explaining multi-color sprite techniques for the Commodore 64. The pattern started here: making invisible techniques visible, making complexity accessible.

Microsoft (1997-2010)

For 13 years, Scott worked across distributed systems and security infrastructure:

• Peer-to-Peer Infrastructure Team: Built PNRP (Peer Name Resolution Protocol)—serverless distributed name resolution with cryptographic pub/priv key identities. This was 2001-2003, before Bitcoin existed. While the team built the complex protocols, Scott wrote the wrapper APIs that made PNRP accessible to normal developers. Same pattern: make complexity accessible.

• Anti-Malware/Security: Built malware scanners and analysis tools that let researchers inspect dangerous code without running it. Make the dangerous safe through transparency.

• Office Division (1997): Met Rob Collie while building tools for Office setup testing—a 28-year friendship that began with Scott's consistent philosophy: "built tools to make the job of the smarter engineers around me easier."

Consulting & Startups (2010-2025)

After Microsoft, Scott worked on consulting and startup endeavors, including founding Tiny Lizard, a BI consulting firm where he helped dozens of companies transform overwhelming data into actionable decisions.

His philosophy: "Crushing The Nouns"—stop generating static reports (nouns) and start building systems that drive action (verbs). He helped organizations "feel their data to optimize decisions," writing 50+ educational blog posts and becoming active in the Power Pivot community.

TIA & SIL (2023-2025)

When the ChatGPT API became available in 2023, Scott began building TIA (The Intelligent Agent)—a transparent, named agent demonstrating how AI can extend human reasoning when every step is visible. TIA evolved through various forms, proving that progressive disclosure, semantic memory, and inspectable reasoning are not just theoretical concepts but practical necessities.

In 2025, Scott founded the Semantic Infrastructure Lab to build what modern AI still lacks: explicit semantic substrate, inspectable reasoning, and deterministic collaboration infrastructure. SIL is the formalization of decades of infrastructure thinking applied to the problem of intelligence.

What He's Built

SIL isn't vaporware. It's working systems:

Production Tools:
- Reveal (v0.19.0, 103 tests) - Semantic code explorer, published to PyPI
- Morphogen (v0.11.0, 900+ tests) - Multi-domain simulation engine
- GenesisGraph (v0.3.0, 363 tests) - Provenance infrastructure
- TiaCAD (v3.1.2, 1080+ tests) - Computational design tools

Research Infrastructure:
- TIA - Development environment: 14,549 files, 60 projects, 1,900+ sessions
- Beth - Knowledge substrate: <400ms semantic search across 8,459 files, 28,750 keywords

Active Development:
- Agent Ether, SUP, RiffStack, Prism, Philbrick, and more

The Philosophy

Inspection Without Danger
- 20+ years: Malware scanners → inspectable intelligence
- Same principle: make dangerous/opaque systems safe through transparency

Actionability by Design
- Reports → verbs not nouns
- Intelligence → decisions not output
- Systems → tools not black boxes

Infrastructure That Empowers
- Not the hero who saves you
- The builder who makes you capable
- 40+ years: tools for others, not applications for customers

Pragmatism + Vision
- Tests before theorizing
- Ships working systems
- But building computational substrate for the next generation

Honest Builder
- In an age of hype: transparency
- In an age of black boxes: openness
- Track record over claims
- Execution over vision statements

Why SIL

Scott believes we're building the future of intelligence out of "rotting wood"—stochastic, hallucinatory, opaque models.

His goal is to replace the wood with steel.

Modern AI systems are powerful but structurally incomplete:
- No explicit meaning (concepts aren't stable, machine-operable structures)
- Brittle reasoning (inference chains can't be inspected or validated)
- Weak memory (systems fragment context, can't maintain semantic continuity)
- Fragmented tools (code, CAD, simulation, workflows live in incompatible ecosystems)
- Unreliable agents (without shared structure, behavior is inconsistent)
- Poor provenance (transformations and assumptions are missing)

These aren't bugs. They're symptoms of a missing layer: semantic infrastructure.

SIL builds the alternative: persistent semantic memory, universal intermediate representations, deterministic engines, multi-agent orchestration, and interfaces where every cognitive layer remains visible.

Education & Background

Education: Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Science, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Current Work: Scott collaborates with TIA, SIL's Chief Semantic Agent—a transparent, named agent contributing decomposition, pattern discovery, and structural scaffolding. This collaboration demonstrates the core SIL thesis: transparent agents extend human reasoning when the system reveals every step.

The Through-Line

This isn't four separate careers. It's one 40+ year mission:

• Age 13: Making sprite techniques accessible → published work
• Microsoft: Making distributed systems accessible → built simple APIs for complex protocols
• Microsoft: Making malware inspectable → built scanners for researchers
• Consulting: Making data actionable → helped companies "feel their data"
• SIL: Making intelligence inspectable → building Cognitive OS infrastructure

Same philosophy across all eras:
- Make complexity inspectable
- Empower others through infrastructure
- Safety through transparency
- Pragmatic execution
- Actionability over information

Contact & Links

• GitHub: Semantic-Infrastructure-Lab
• Website: semanticinfrastructurelab.org
• LinkedIn: Scott Senkeresty

Make meaning explicit. Make reasoning traceable. Build structures that last.