Field notes on inspectable analytics.

Business meaning, analytical plans, context systems, and practical evaluation of AI analytics.

September 2, 2026 · evaluation · ai-analyst · governance

How to Evaluate an AI Analyst Before It Touches Production

A buyer-ready evaluation for ambiguity handling, visible interpretation, refusal behavior, semantic checks, query inspection, and provenance.

Venkatesh Seetharam & Harish Butani

August 26, 2026 · semantic-layer · governance · analysis

The Meaning Hiding Inside ‘Growing’

A governed metric is only part of an analytical question. Words such as growing, declining, and churning can still hide choices about population, period, comparison, and scope.

Venkatesh Seetharam & Harish Butani

August 19, 2026 · self-service-bi · trust · opinion

Self-Service Gave Us Access, Not Agreement

Self-service BI expanded access to data. It did not settle which definition, report, or interpretation a business question should use.

Venkatesh Seetharam & Harish Butani

August 12, 2026 · text-to-sql · bitter-lesson · opinion

Why Direct Text-to-SQL Hits a Governance Wall

Direct text-to-SQL can generate excellent code. The governance problem begins when the business interpretation exists only inside that generation step.

Venkatesh Seetharam & Harish Butani

August 5, 2026 · bi · adoption · research

BI Works. So Why Do Only 16% Use It Regularly?

BARC reports strong BI benefits but only 16% regular use in large enterprises. Explore the gap between a business question and an explicit analysis.

Venkatesh Seetharam & Harish Butani

July 29, 2026 · agentic-bi · semantic-layer · vision

The Engine Is Not the System

Anthropic published a detailed account of how it runs self-service analytics with Claude. Read closely, it's the strongest case yet for why a model alone won't do your BI — and what has to sit around it.

Venkatesh Seetharam & Harish Butani

June 15, 2026 · context-graphs · vision · moat

You Can't Buy Your Context Graph

Tony Seale's warning is sharp: a context you can buy is a context your competitors can buy too. Here's why Spotonix doesn't sell you context — it gives you the machinery to build and own it.

Venkatesh Seetharam & Harish Butani

April 16, 2026 · context-graphs · vision · AI

Context Graphs Are Coming to BI

Ashu Garg argues the next trillion-dollar opportunity is context graphs — decision traces that capture how organizations reason. Here's what that means for business intelligence.

Venkatesh Seetharam & Harish Butani

August 15, 2025 · opinion · dashboards

Dashboards Are Read-Only Knowledge

Your dashboards capture what someone once thought was important. They don't capture why, how, or what happens when the question changes.

Venkatesh Seetharam

August 1, 2025 · research · analyst-workflow

How Analysts Actually Think (And Why It Matters for AI)

Expert analysts don't write SQL from scratch. They discover, pattern-match, and compose. We studied how — and built a system that thinks the same way.

Harish Butani & Venkatesh Seetharam

THE MEANING GAP

What breaks when you point an LLM at your data.

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