Security for the human mind.
Every other layer of the digital world has a security industry. The person reading the message does not. Esothel Labs builds M.I.N.D. - a detection engine that measures how language is engineered to pressure people, and returns a calibrated score with the specific techniques named. When the evidence is low, it says so rather than guess.
Defense only · content-neutral · privacy-first
The last unprotected layer is the person.
Your network has a firewall. Your inbox has a spam filter. Your bank has fraud detection. The moment a message reaches a human being, all of that stops, and the only defence left is whether that person happens to be alert, rested, and not in a hurry.
Pressure works on everyone
Manufactured urgency, a fabricated crowd, a closing window. These are not tricks that only careless people fall for - they are engineered to work on attention itself, and they work best on people who are busy.
Existing tools cry wolf
Most systems that try to flag manipulation also flag ordinary emotional writing: a news report about a disaster, an urgent note from a colleague. Alert someone about the news often enough and they stop reading alerts entirely.
Judging content picks sides
Deciding what is true, topic by topic, means deciding who to trust and putting a thumb on the scale. It does not scale, it does not travel across languages and cultures, and it makes the tool a participant in the argument.
Manipulation has structure. Structure can be measured.
Scams, astroturfing, and pressure campaigns differ in content but repeat in construction: the countdown, the fabricated crowd, the push to act before thinking. M.I.N.D. detects that construction directly - independent of topic, viewpoint, or who wrote it.
Multi-layer analysis of how a message is built
The engine reads each message across independent analytical layers - pressure patterns, emotional trajectory, social-proof claims, choice framing - and screens against a catalogue of 179 documented manipulation techniques.
Evidence you can audit, not a verdict to obey
Every score arrives with the specific techniques found and the phrases that triggered them. The output is designed to be checked against your own judgment - and overruled by it.
Confidence that means what it says
Scores are calibrated: when the engine reports 80% confidence, it is right about 80% of the time. Where the evidence is genuinely ambiguous, it abstains - an honest “not sure” beats a confident guess.
Two urgent, emotional messages. Only one is engineered.
The hard problem in this field is not catching scams - it’s not flagging legitimate passion. Below, the production engine analyzes two messages that look similar on the surface. These are its real outputs, unedited.
“URGENT: your account will be suspended in 24 hours. Everyone on your team has already verified. Do not be the last. Click now to secure access.”
- Manufactured urgency“24 hours”
- False consensus“everyone has already…”
- Compliance pressure“click now”
“This policy will hurt thousands of families in our town. I am heartbroken and honestly angry. Call your representative today and tell them to vote no.”
- Strong emotion presentnot penalized
- Urgency and call to actionno pressure loop
- No fabricated consensusno identity bait
Same engine, same day, same default configuration. Distinguishing engineered pressure from authentic conviction - at scale, with evidence attached - is the core capability.
Built for people who want to see clearly - and for those who look out for others.
Check the message that feels off
A pressuring text, a too-urgent email, a post that feels engineered. Paste it into the bot and get the score, the techniques, and an honest read in seconds. Free during the beta.
Join the betaProtect the rooms you run
Screen inbound content, surface coordinated pressure campaigns early, and set thresholds on a score whose confidence is calibrated - with evidence you can show your users. The API is coming soon.
Follow the rolloutInterrogate the claims
Our evaluation discipline is the product: frozen benchmarks, stated conditions, adversarial testing of our own fixes. We welcome researchers who want to probe the methodology - or break the model.
Contact the labThe category is forming now
Cognitive security is where application security was two decades ago: an obvious, unpriced risk without a standard defense. We’re helping build that standard. Serious inquiries welcome.
Start a conversationCommitments, engineered in.
A company that measures persuasion must be structurally incapable of abusing it. These four commitments are design constraints of the system, not policy statements - and they are non-negotiable at any price.
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Defense only
The technology detects and explains manipulation; it is never used to produce or optimize it. Not for advertisers, not for campaigns, not for any client. There is no offensive product line, and there will not be one.
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Content-neutral by construction
The engine scores how a message is built - never whether its claims are true, and never which side it takes. It contains no fact-checking component and no viewpoint signal. Advocacy, hard news, and blunt opinion score low unless engineered pressure is actually present.
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Privacy as architecture
Analyzed text is processed in memory, not retained past the session, never used for training, and never shared. The system is built local-first so protection doesn’t require surveillance.
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The human decides
M.I.N.D. never blocks, removes, or ranks content. It informs the person reading - then steps back. Any deployment that takes the decision away from the human is a misuse of the product.
Run your first analysis in the next two minutes.
Join the public beta and run the engine on the message that’s been nagging at you. Free for individuals during the beta.
Available today via Discord & Telegram · browser extension, API, and more coming soon