# CARE Institute

> CARE Institute is an independent nonprofit in San Francisco. Our open tools help hospitals, law firms, and governments keep private data where their rules say.

CARE Institute is an independent research nonprofit in San Francisco. We work on one problem: where may an AI agent send each request? Our answer has three steps. Classify each request by how sensitive it is. Route it only to models cleared for that class, on a device or in the cloud. Audit every choice so a reviewer can check it later. We publish our methods, code, and data so that anyone can test them.

## Research
- [The Cost of Governance: Measuring Overhead in Toggleable LLM Agent Safety Layers](https://careinstitute.ai/research/cost-of-governance/): How much time governance checks add to each API call. Measured results will follow an archived replication run.
- [Beyond Cost-Quality: Privacy-Aware Routing for Local-to-Cloud LLM Escalation](https://careinstitute.ai/research/privacy-routing/): A five-class scheme for labelling how sensitive a request is, and routing it only to the set of models allowed to see it.
- [claw0: A Zero-Dependency Agent Governance Framework](https://careinstitute.ai/research/claw0/): One Python file that runs all five common agent patterns: tool use, ReAct, planning, reflection, and multi-agent. It needs no outside libraries.

## Blog
- [The Criticality-Routing Problem](https://careinstitute.ai/blog/the-criticality-routing-problem/): AI is driving up the price of chips, memory, and critical minerals. The fix isn’t price-gouging outrage or patience — it’s criticality-routing: sort demand by what’s actually at stake before deciding who gets served, and at what price.
- [The Privacy-Routing Problem](https://careinstitute.ai/blog/the-privacy-routing-problem/): The choice is not cloud or local. Each request has its own sensitivity, and each needs its own route.

## Indexes and topics
- [Research](https://careinstitute.ai/research/): every paper, newest first
- [Blog](https://careinstitute.ai/blog/): every post, newest first
- [Topics](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/): every topic, most-used first
- [Topic: Governance](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/governance/): 2 entries
- [Topic: Privacy](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/privacy/): 2 entries
- [Topic: Routing](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/routing/): 2 entries
- [Topic: Agentic AI](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/agentic-ai/): 1 entry
- [Topic: Agents](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/agents/): 1 entry
- [Topic: AI Governance](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/ai-governance/): 1 entry
- [Topic: Architecture](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/architecture/): 1 entry
- [Topic: Benchmarks](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/benchmarks/): 1 entry
- [Topic: Compute](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/compute/): 1 entry
- [Topic: Critical Minerals](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/critical-minerals/): 1 entry
- [Topic: Criticality Routing](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/criticality-routing/): 1 entry
- [Topic: Edge Computing](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/edge-computing/): 1 entry
- [Topic: Enterprise](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/enterprise/): 1 entry
- [Topic: Overhead](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/overhead/): 1 entry
- [Topic: Semiconductors](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/semiconductors/): 1 entry
- [Topic: Supply Chain](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/supply-chain/): 1 entry

## About

- [About](https://careinstitute.ai/about/): CARE Institute is an independent research nonprofit in San Francisco. We work on one problem: where may an AI agent send each request?
- [Glossary](https://careinstitute.ai/glossary/): Ten terms this site uses, defined once: privacy routing, classify, route, audit, sensitivity classes, the cleared set, held routes, and three more.
- [Research residency](https://careinstitute.ai/residency/): Apply for a 3-to-6-month remote research residency at CARE. Work on privacy-routing, agent governance, or agentic economics.
- [Support CARE](https://careinstitute.ai/support/): CARE Institute is a 501(c)(3) public charity. Gifts pay for open research, open code, and open data.
- [Privacy](https://careinstitute.ai/privacy/): This site sets no cookies and runs no third-party scripts. How CARE Institute handles the information you choose to give us.

## Key facts

- Legal name: Center of Agentic Research and Education
- Trade name: CARE Institute
- Status: 501(c)(3) public charity
- EIN: 42-2023586
- Based in: San Francisco, CA
- Focus: classify, route, audit
- Output: papers, working drafts, and open-source tools
- Code licence: Apache 2.0
- Research: 3 papers (2 preprints pending, 1 working paper)
- Residency: 3 to 6 months, remote; stipend for residents without institutional funding
- Contact: info@careinstitute.ai

## Machine-readable

- [llms-full.txt](https://careinstitute.ai/llms-full.txt): every page on this site, in full, as plain text.
- [CARE Institute (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/index.md)
- [About CARE (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/about/index.md)
- [Glossary (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/glossary/index.md)
- [Privacy (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/privacy/index.md)
- [Research residency (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/residency/index.md)
- [Support CARE (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/support/index.md)
- [The Criticality-Routing Problem (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/blog/the-criticality-routing-problem/index.md)
- [The Privacy-Routing Problem (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/blog/the-privacy-routing-problem/index.md)
- [The Cost of Governance: Measuring Overhead in Toggleable LLM Agent Safety Layers (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/research/cost-of-governance/index.md)
- [Beyond Cost-Quality: Privacy-Aware Routing for Local-to-Cloud LLM Escalation (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/research/privacy-routing/index.md)
- [claw0: A Zero-Dependency Agent Governance Framework (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/research/claw0/index.md)
- [Blog (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/blog/index.md)
- [Research (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/research/index.md)
- [Tags (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/index.md)
- [Topic: Governance (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/governance/index.md)
- [Topic: Privacy (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/privacy/index.md)
- [Topic: Routing (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/routing/index.md)
- [Topic: Agentic AI (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/agentic-ai/index.md)
- [Topic: Agents (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/agents/index.md)
- [Topic: AI Governance (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/ai-governance/index.md)
- [Topic: Architecture (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/architecture/index.md)
- [Topic: Benchmarks (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/benchmarks/index.md)
- [Topic: Compute (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/compute/index.md)
- [Topic: Critical Minerals (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/critical-minerals/index.md)
- [Topic: Criticality Routing (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/criticality-routing/index.md)
- [Topic: Edge Computing (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/edge-computing/index.md)
- [Topic: Enterprise (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/enterprise/index.md)
- [Topic: Overhead (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/overhead/index.md)
- [Topic: Semiconductors (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/semiconductors/index.md)
- [Topic: Supply Chain (Markdown)](https://careinstitute.ai/tags/supply-chain/index.md)