# Speakers — Interpretable Context Methodology Corpus

> Alphabetical. Each section: where the speaker appears, key contributions, and links to their most important attributed concepts, claims, and quotes.

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## Andrej Karpathy

**Appears in**: video (talk), paper (cited)

Karpathy is not a speaker on the talk or a co-author of the paper, but he is cited in **both** sources in different conceptual roles. The video uses him as *social proof* (he too writes markdown rather than building frameworks); the paper uses him as *theoretical scaffolding* for context engineering.

- Entity notes: [[entity-andrej-karpathy-d1]] (talk framing), [[entity-andrej-karpathy-d2]] (paper framing)
- Key bridge note: [[synthesis-dialogue-to-context-engineering]]
- Attributed concepts:
  - **"LLM Wiki"** markdown-based personal knowledge approach (talk)
  - **"Context engineering"** (2025): system performance depends on what context is delivered, in what structure, at what moment (paper) — see [[concept-context-scoping]]

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## David McDermott

**Appears in**: video (talk participant), paper (co-author)

McDermott is the *quieter* of the two named authors. On the talk he is a named participant with limited individually attributed content. On the paper he is the named co-author, sharing the formal authorship with Van Clief.

- Entity note: [[entity-david-mcdermott]]
- Source affiliations: [[entity-icm-paper]] (co-author), talk participant
- Role across the corpus: lends academic-credibility weight on the paper side; relatively limited individually attributed content. Treat unattributed paper claims as joint Van Clief + McDermott; treat unattributed talk claims as Van Clief unless context says otherwise.

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## Jake Van Clief

**Appears in**: video (primary speaker), paper (first author)

Van Clief is the originator of ICM and the primary voice across both sources. The talk is his *practitioner-conviction* mode; the paper is his *researcher-honesty* mode. Almost every quote and claim in the corpus traces to him.

- Entity note: [[entity-jake-van-clief]]
- Source affiliations: talk (primary speaker), [[entity-icm-paper]] (first author)
- Key bridge note: [[arc-talk-vs-paper-altitude]]
- Attributed concepts: [[concept-icm-d1]], [[concept-icm-d2]], [[concept-dialogue-structure]], [[concept-three-levels-ai]], [[concept-voice-collaboration]], [[concept-five-layer-hierarchy]], [[concept-stage-contracts]], [[concept-context-scoping]], [[concept-observability-side-effect]], [[concept-edit-source-principle]], [[concept-portability]], [[concept-icm-as-compilation]]
- Attributed frameworks: [[framework-skill-creation]], [[framework-icm-architecture]], [[framework-workspace-builder]]
- Attributed claims: [[claim-icm-superiority]], [[claim-l2-roi]], [[claim-voice-future]], [[claim-token-efficiency]], [[claim-ushaped-intervention]], [[claim-external-adoption]]
- Signature quotes:
  - [[quote-absurdities]] — "folders and markdown files… huge results" (talk)
  - [[quote-l2-roi]] — "the jump from L1 to L2 is the highest-ROI move" (talk)
  - [[quote-dialogue-theme]] — "one core theme: discussion and dialogue" (talk)
  - [[quote-voice-control]] — "sit inside of a group call and control… Claude code" (talk)
  - [[quote-folder-controls-context]] — "the folder structure controls what context it receives" (paper)
  - [[quote-glass-box]] — "never opaque in the first place" (paper)
  - [[quote-edit-source]] — "editing the source fixes every future run" (paper)

When asked "who said this?" — default to Van Clief unless the source explicitly attributes otherwise. The McDermott paper co-authorship means paper claims are formally joint, but the conceptual register and signature framing are Van Clief's.

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## K. Kumar

**Appears in**: video (talk participant)

Kumar is a University of Edinburgh student and Van Clief's collaborator. He built the **visual decision-tree mapping tool** that surfaces the latent dialogue structure inside chat transcripts — the prototype that operationalizes [[concept-dialogue-structure]].

- Entity note: [[entity-k-kumar]]
- Source affiliation: talk only
- Key contribution: visual mapping tool for dialogue structure extraction
- Conceptual lineage: his tool is the precursor to the paper's [[framework-workspace-builder]] — see [[synthesis-workspace-builder-is-the-meta-dialogue]]
- Institutional link: connects the corpus to the University of Edinburgh, one of the named external adopters in [[entity-external-adopters]] and [[claim-external-adoption]]