// field notes on security & AI

CipherMind

In-depth writing on AI & LLMs, cybersecurity, PKI & cryptography — and the command-line recipes that tie them together.

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21 articles
Harness Engineering: The Harness Around the Brain
AI7 min

Harness Engineering: The Harness Around the Brain

The loop makes an LLM behave like an agent, but the harness is what makes it survivable in production — tool registry, context manager, state store, guardrails, and evaluators around the model.

Loop Engineering: The Brain Behind the Agent
AI5 min

Loop Engineering: The Brain Behind the Agent

An LLM is a stateless next-token predictor. The 'brain' of an AI agent isn't the model — it's the loop you build around it. What actually happens in one iteration, and where the loop breaks in production.

First Step Towards CISSP Certification: A Practical Starter's Guide
Others5 min

First Step Towards CISSP Certification: A Practical Starter's Guide

A field guide to starting your CISSP journey — prerequisites, domains, the study materials that actually helped, and the exam-day strategy I wish someone had handed me on day one.

Passkeys: The Future of Web Authentication
PKI6 min

Passkeys: The Future of Web Authentication

Passkeys replace passwords with asymmetric cryptography bound to your device and unlocked by a biometric. How they actually work, why they're better, and where they still fall short.

Fine-Tuning vs Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG): Choosing the Right Approach for Custom LLMs
AI4 min

Fine-Tuning vs Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG): Choosing the Right Approach for Custom LLMs

Fine-tuning bakes knowledge into the model's weights; RAG lets it look things up. A clear-eyed comparison across cost, latency, freshness, and accuracy — plus when to use both.

LLM Context Windows and Memory: How Models Handle Extended Dialogues
AI4 min

LLM Context Windows and Memory: How Models Handle Extended Dialogues

Why LLMs forget, how much they can actually remember, and the four techniques — bigger windows, RAG, persistent memory, and efficient attention — that push past the limit.

Tools

All 11 tools →

Free security tools that run entirely in your browser — locked so nothing you paste can leave it.

JWT Inspector

Decode a JSON Web Token, verify its signature, and check it the way your API should — plus inspect a JWKS or OpenID Connect configuration for risky settings.

Open →

Certificate & CSR Decoder

Read certificates, CSRs, .p7b bundles and CRLs — then check the chain reaches a trusted root, covers your host name, follows the CA/Browser Forum rules, and isn’t revoked.

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SAML Inspector

Decode a SAMLResponse or AuthnRequest and see who it logs in, for which service and until when — with checks for unsigned assertions, signature wrapping and comment tricks.

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Encode / Decode Workbench

Base64, hex, URL, HTML, Unicode, Base32, quoted-printable, MIME headers, PowerShell -EncodedCommand, gzip/deflate (SAML), punycode, ROT and XOR — auto-detected, chainable and shareable as a link.

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Hash & Checksum Verifier

Check downloads against their published checksum — and verify the checksum file’s own OpenPGP or minisign signature, so you know who published it.

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Secret Generator

Passwords, passphrases, API keys, encryption keys and UUIDs from your browser’s cryptographic random generator — with the strength in bits.

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