FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What Vinci is, how it's built, and how we make it verifiable. Plain answers.
What makes Vinci different?
Two things: character and ownership. Vinci has a trained personality with taste that you'll actually enjoy using — and because the weights are open, you download and own it instead of renting access. Everything else (the public Constitution, verification, Canadian hosting) is proof those two claims are real.
What is Vinci?
Vinci is SimpleDirect's AI product — open-weight large language models with a trained character, hosted in Canada. Vinci 1.0 (vinci-piccolo, 4B) launches June 30, 2026, free, with a chat web app and mobile app.
Is SimpleDirect an AI wrapper?
No. We fine-tune open foundation models and publish our own large language models with Constitutional Fine-Tuning. The weights are ours to shape and yours to download — not an API we resell.
What is Constitutional Fine-Tuning?
Our methodology. We train a model from a public Constitution and a public Character document — identity and behavioural fine-tuning plus preference training — on an open foundation model. It's published and reproducible, not proprietary magic.
Is Vinci open weights?
Yes — Vinci ships as open weights you download and run on your own hardware, fine-tune, and build on. The weights are released under Apache 2.0 unless a specific model announces otherwise (for example, MIT); each model card states its license. The underlying base models are permissively licensed too — Apache 2.0 for the Qwen-based models, MIT for the DeepSeek-based ones.
How much does Vinci cost?
At launch it's free, with no usage limits — and the open weights are free to download and run forever. We'll add transparent, low pricing as we grow, with a free tier to try. No promos, no surprise overage bills.
What are Vinci models built on?
Open foundation models: the Qwen family (Apache 2.0) for piccolo, bozza, and tela, and DeepSeek (MIT) for studio and opera — then trained toward the public Constitution. We attribute the base openly; the character and the gains are measured against it.
What does "verify, don't trust" mean?
We publish the Constitution, the Character document, the methodology, and adversarial test results. You can run your own evaluations against the open weights. If Vinci's behaviour ever diverges from them, that's a bug — and we commit to publishing a fix within 30 days.
Is my data retained?
No. Vinci is hosted on Canadian sovereign infrastructure with Zero Data Retention by default. Self-host the open weights and your data never leaves your network. The details are at /data.
Does Vinci speak French?
Yes — it speaks English and French well.
What happened to the flash-1 series?
flash-1 was our research — open models that taught us how to train toward a Constitution. They live on /research and on Hugging Face. The product is Vinci.
Where is SimpleDirect based?
Toronto, Canada. Vinci trains and runs on Canadian sovereign infrastructure, under Canadian law.
Are SimpleDirect and Vinci trademarks?
SimpleDirect® is a registered trademark of Alpine Pacific Trading Inc. in the United States, with registration pending in Canada. Vinci™ is a trademark of Alpine Pacific Trading Inc.
The short version
Rent, or own.
Hidden behind a closed model.
Public Constitution and Character you can read.
Confident, sometimes invented.
Grounded in your documents, with a 'no' instead of a guess.
Rented access that can vanish.
Open weights, self-hostable, yours to keep.
Launching June 30, 2026
Follow the build.
Open weights, a public Constitution, and a model you can verify — the day it ships. Get the launch in your inbox. No spam, just the drop.
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