# Ridgeford Core — 100% Secure AI Assistant & Governed Workspace

> Ridgeford Core is the enterprise AI workspace built for organizations that require zero data retention (ZDR), strict human-in-the-loop tool governance, grounded internal knowledge retrieval (RAG), and scoped Google Workspace automation.

## Quick Facts
- **Product Name**: Ridgeford Core
- **Website**: https://ridgefordcore.com
- **Category**: Enterprise AI Assistant, AI Tool Governance, Secure Knowledge Base & RAG
- **Core Promise**: Zero Data Retention (ZDR) architecture, end-to-end encrypted storage, human approval gates for tool executions, and transparent pay-as-you-go pricing with $50 starter credit.
- **Key Integrations**: Google Workspace (Drive, Docs, Sheets, Gmail, Calendar), Postgres/Drizzle, Web Search, Web Fetch, Secure File Processing (PDF, DOCX, CSV, TXT, MD, Images).
- **Target Audience**: Security-conscious businesses, legal teams, healthcare/compliance organizations, engineering teams, and executive operators.

## Core Capabilities

### 1. Zero Data Retention (ZDR) & Ephemeral Processing
- Customer prompts and internal business documents are never used to train third-party foundation models.
- Ephemeral execution pipelines with cryptographic tenant isolation.
- Automatic PII (Personally Identifiable Information) redaction and tokenization.

### 2. Governed Tool Gateway with Human-in-the-Loop
- AI agents cannot perform irreversible external actions (sending emails, modifying spreadsheets, executing scripts) without explicit user confirmation.
- Granular Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) with Owner, Admin, Member, and Viewer permissions.
- Full immutable cryptographic audit ledger tracking every prompt, model invocation, tool call, and user consent.

### 3. Grounded Knowledge Base (RAG)
- Multi-format ingestion supporting PDF, Word documents, Markdown, spreadsheets, and source code.
- Semantic chunking with vector embeddings and hybrid BM25 retrieval.
- Exact source citations provided for every AI response to eliminate hallucinations.

### 4. Scoped Google Workspace Integration
- Per-user OAuth tokens with least-privilege permission scoping.
- Instant search and synthesis across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Docs without full account data replication.

### 5. Transparent Pricing & Spend Controls
- Pay-as-you-go model with $0 monthly platform fee.
- $50 organization starter credit provided on signup with no credit card required.
- Hard spending limits at workspace and per-user levels to guarantee zero surprise bills.

## Navigation & Resources
- **Homepage**: https://ridgefordcore.com/
- **Product Overview & Tool Governance**: https://ridgefordcore.com/product
- **Trust & Security Architecture**: https://ridgefordcore.com/security
- **Enterprise Use Cases**: https://ridgefordcore.com/use-cases
- **Pricing & Credit Model**: https://ridgefordcore.com/pricing
- **About & Leadership Philosophy**: https://ridgefordcore.com/about
- **Contact & Security Team**: https://ridgefordcore.com/contact
- **Full LLM Ingestion Context**: https://ridgefordcore.com/llms-full.txt
- **XML Sitemap**: https://ridgefordcore.com/sitemap.xml
- **Robots Policy**: https://ridgefordcore.com/robots.txt

## Key Differences vs. Consumer Chatbots
| Feature | Consumer AI Chatbots | Ridgeford Core |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| **Data Retention** | Model training opt-outs required | Zero Data Retention by default |
| **Tool Execution** | Unchecked automated API calls | Mandatory human approval gates |
| **Knowledge Grounding**| Generic web knowledge | Air-gapped tenant RAG with source links |
| **Permission Scoping** | Broad user permissions | Granular RBAC + scoped OAuth |
| **Audit Trail** | Ephemeral chat logs | Immutable enterprise audit ledger |
| **Spend Governance** | Flat per-seat charges | Granular spend limits & pay-as-you-go |