Ryan “RyMac” McKinney · USMC · 21 August 2026 · 4 minute read
I did not invent this and I do not sell it. Jake Van Clief did, I pay for his group every month, and I run his folder system across several businesses. That makes me neither the author nor a bystander, which is the seat almost nobody writing about this is sitting in.
Jake Van Clief and David McDermott published the paper behind Interpretable Context Methodology, and Jake teaches the folder version of it at Clief Notes. He gets a large amount of search traffic on his own name, which is how most people arrive at a page like this one.
Somebody called him a charlatan in my comments. I answered that with receipts rather than opinions, and that is its own post: is Jake Van Clief legit. This post is not about him. It is about the thing.
One file is always read first and it does nothing but point at the second file. The second file says what you are working on and what has already been decided. Folders under those 2 hold the actual material. Your AI reads down that path before it says a word to you.
The paper calls that folder structure as agentic architecture. You may hear architecture and picture something enormous. It simply means the shape of the thing, and here the shape is a filing cabinet.
That is the system. If you want it named folder by folder, I opened mine up in the ICM folder structure.
I want to be honest that I do not run it exactly as taught, because pretending otherwise would make this post worth less to you.
I keep the map shorter than I first did. Mine has landed between 77 and 137 lines across every version I have saved. Early on I kept adding rules to it and every rule I added made the agent slower to get to the point.
I give each business its own desk file. Jake's teaching handles one project cleanly. I run several, so the map became a switchboard. The multiple brands post is that change written out.
I write the finish line down every time. This is the part I skipped for 3 weeks and it is the part that cost me.
Before, every morning started with re-explaining my own business to a machine that had forgotten it overnight. If that sentence lands, read why Claude forgot what you were doing, because the reason is not what most people think.
After, I open a folder and it already knows. I tested that claim rather than asserting it: I rebuilt an entire content system with one prompt on camera, and separately built a funnel live with it running underneath.
It does not make the AI smarter. Same model, same limits. It changes what the model can see, which turns out to matter more than most people expect, but it is not magic and anybody telling you it is has something to sell you.
It does not survive neglect. A desk file nobody updates becomes a desk file that lies.
It does not need his group, or mine. You can build the empty version tonight. I say that knowing exactly how it sounds coming from a page that ends in a free download.
The method costs nothing. The folders are free. The paper is free.
Jake's group is paid and I am in it, and that link above is an affiliate link, which you should know before you click anything on the internet. The starter kit on this site is free and there is no card, because it is a text file and a folder structure and charging $5,000 for that is the exact crime I complain about.
Jake's own explainer is the clearest short version and it is the video I still point people at.
Then, if you want to check whether it holds up under real work rather than on a slide, is the ICM folder system legit is where I put the case against it at full strength before answering it.
The kit is 6 files. It takes 20 minutes. A start page. A map. A desk file. The folder skeleton. A setup sheet. A list of what to cancel. No card. No call. No course to buy.
Send me the folder system