Knowledge Vault

Research grounded in what Donors have actually approved.

The Knowledge Vault is a curated climate finance corpus, not a general-purpose AI trained on the open web. Every response is grounded in source documents, to include your own institutional files and every claim linked back to a specific source and page. This approach ensures no hallucinated responses.

Knowledge Vault interface

What They're Saying

"Integrating this software into our workflow means we can deliver superior quality proposals faster. This isn't about replacing expertise — it's about amplifying it."
Qavah Earth · Cape Town
"The ability to rapidly evaluate a concept note against Donor criteria is a game-changer. It saved us days of work and allowed us to deliver a superior product at a fraction of the traditional cost."
Project Developer · South Africa
"It would be wise to have the Concept Note Evaluator in the initial assessment and in the final stage as well. Useful for project developers, private players, and Donor applicants with limited experience."
Development Bank · Southern Africa
"The Converter tool was a lifesaver, migrating our Concept Note to the new Donor format in under two hours. The summary of changes would have taken us days of research."
Project Proponent · Africa
"I found your AI assistants very helpful in organizing ideas and aligning them with Donor criteria. Most importantly, it saved loads of time."
International Delivery Partner · Africa
"The Concept Note Converter has been an invaluable resource that bridges this gap, ensuring our CNs were aligned with the latest Donor standards."
Project Proponent · Zimbabwe
How It Works

The Knowledge Vault

Don't just guess — build. Instantly access proven models, logic and arguments from thousands of approved project files to strengthen and align your submissions.

Knowledge Vault Step 1 — select a prompt
Step 1: Select a Theme-Based Prompt or Enter Your Own Question
After creating your CFI account, select a theme and explore example prompts in the main screen or prompt library. Choose a prompt, update the fields if needed and click submit or enter your own question.
Knowledge Vault Step 2 — review output and sources
Step 2: Review the Output & Sources
Once you've submitted your prompt or question, in a few seconds a generated output with verifiable source citations will display. Review the output and feel free to continue the conversation by asking follow-up questions to refine the results.
The Knowledge Layers

Critical knowledge discoverable and retained.

CFI (Climate Finance Intelligence) is a comprehensive knowledge management platform that centralizes all the resources and files required to develop project ideas and rigorously stress-test drafts prior to submission.

Layer 1
Institutional Layer
Composed of your organization's non-public project files — including past submissions and lessons learned. This system drives seamless knowledge retention, rapid discovery, and secure dissemination.
Layer 2
Climate Science Layer
Integrates authoritative global and regional climate data. The base layer is composed of reports and publications most cited in approved project files. It directly supports the construction of a defensible climate rationale.
Layer 3
Donor Layer
On behalf of our clients, and with pertinent permissions, we can integrate the publicly available project libraries of most donors. Thousands of project files — including Concept Notes, Funding Proposals and more — interrogable.
? One Query  ·  Nuanced Responses
An Analyst asks:
We're preparing an urban flood-resilience and landslide-risk proposal for informal settlements around Freetown. What GCF funding proposals or concept notes have been approved for similar West African coastal contexts, and what were their core theory of change arguments?
CFI returns, in under a minute:
  • Comparable GCF-approved urban flood-resilience and landslide/disaster-risk-reduction proposals from West African and other coastal LDC contexts, with theory of change data.
  • Below the report, the actual text from the funding proposals cited in the response, made available for your review.
How It Works

From query to fully cited response.

Work that would otherwise require days of manual document review compresses to minutes — with full source attribution intact.

1
Ask Your Question
  • Find comparable funded projects assessed against your criteria
  • Verify climate rationale evidence for a specific geography
  • Check policy alignment against national documentation
2
Retrieval-Augmented Generation
  • The system retrieves the most relevant source documents from the corpus
  • Responses are generated from those documents — not from model memory
  • Every factual claim is tied to a specific source and page
3
Structured, Cited Output
  • Comparable project rankings, field extractions, or narrative synthesis
  • Multi-turn conversation supported — context carried forward across turns
  • Explicit coverage-gap disclosure when the corpus lacks sufficient data
Built-in Properties
Every claim linked to source & page
Geographic specificity maintained
Coverage gaps disclosed explicitly
Curated corpus — not a web crawl
Multi-turn conversation supported
No setup — shared corpus available immediately
What You Can Do With It

Structured outputs for every workflow.

Outputs are structured to fit the task — not just a paragraph of text.

Comparable Project Rankings
Side-by-side comparable-project rankings assessed against your own criteria — useful for positioning a new submission against precedent or identifying what evidence patterns have been accepted in similar geographies and sectors.
Climate Evidence Retrieval
Retrieve climate science documentation for a specific geography, sector, and hazard — with every figure cited to its source document and passage. Compresses days of manual literature review to minutes.
Policy Alignment Checks
Check a project's design against national NDCs, NAPs, and National Communications — identifying alignment and flagging where the policy case needs to be strengthened before submission.
Narrative Synthesis
Narrative synthesis across multiple sources, with multi-turn conversation supported. Ask follow-up questions, narrow scope, or request a different format — the system carries context forward correctly across turns.
FAQ

Common questions about the Knowledge Vault.

It gives your team a research interface grounded in a curated climate finance corpus — not a general-purpose AI trained on the open web. When you ask a question, the system retrieves the most relevant source documents from its underlying knowledge base and uses them to generate a response, with every factual claim linked back to a specific source and page. The practical result is that work that would otherwise require days of manual document review — finding comparable funded projects, verifying climate rationale evidence, checking policy alignment — compresses to minutes, with full source attribution intact.

General AI chatbots draw on their training data, which is broad but unverifiable, undated, and not traceable. They can't tell you which document a claim comes from, they may confuse projects from different geographies or vintages, and they have no mechanism for knowing when their training data doesn't cover a specific country or topic. The Knowledge Vault is the opposite: every response is grounded in a curated, maintained corpus of approved funding proposals, peer-reviewed climate science, and national policy documents. If the corpus doesn't have sufficient coverage for a given geography or question, the system tells you that explicitly rather than generating a plausible-sounding but unverifiable answer.

The corpus spans three main categories: (1) approved funding proposals and comparable project records from Donor programs; (2) climate science literature — including IPCC assessment reports, regional climate risk profiles, and national meteorological data; and (3) national policy documents such as Nationally Determined Contributions, National Adaptation Plans, and National Communications. Each category is maintained separately so the system can route your query to the right underlying source, distinguishing a request for comparable projects from a request for climate science evidence or national policy context.

Geographic specificity is a core design requirement, not an afterthought. Each region's science and policy corpora are maintained separately, and the system routes queries accordingly. A query about climate risk in a specific Small Island Developing State will draw on that state's own climate profiles and national documentation — not pooled regional averages that could misrepresent local conditions. Current coverage spans multiple SIDS and LDC regions, and the corpus is continuously expanding.

Yes — and this is one of its most important properties for institutional use. When the underlying corpus lacks sufficient documentation for a given geography or topic, the system surfaces an explicit coverage-gap disclosure alongside its response rather than attempting to fill the gap with inference. For a sector where an unsupported claim in a submission can cost months of back-and-forth with a Donor, knowing the limits of available evidence is as valuable as having the evidence itself.

Two design choices work together. First, retrieval-augmented generation means the model isn't generating from memory — it's responding based on documents it has just retrieved, and every claim is tied to a specific source and page. Second, the corpus itself is curated and maintained, not a general web crawl, which means the underlying material is high-quality and Donor-relevant. That combination doesn't eliminate the possibility of error, but it means errors are detectable: you can check the cited source directly.

Outputs are structured to fit the task. Depending on what you're working on, the system can produce side-by-side comparable-project rankings assessed against your own criteria, structured field extractions from funding proposals, or narrative synthesis across multiple sources. Multi-turn conversation is supported, so you can ask follow-up questions, narrow scope, or request a different format without starting over — the system carries context forward correctly across turns.

No document upload is required to access the shared corpus — it's available immediately. If your institution wants its own proprietary documents (internal templates, project-specific reference material, in-house research) included in your team's knowledge base, those can be uploaded through the Master Administration Panel, which extends the platform with your own content. For the shared corpus, there is no setup step.

Three worth flagging. First, corpus coverage: the knowledge base is strong for the regions and Donor programs it covers, but if your work is concentrated in a geography or sector with thin representation in the corpus, the system will tell you — but that coverage gap is real. Second, document quality: the system performs best when the source documents it retrieves are themselves well-structured; very poorly formatted or scanned legacy documents may index with reduced fidelity. Third, it's a research and drafting accelerant, not a substitute for expert judgment — a climate finance professional reviewing AI-generated synthesis still adds value that automation cannot replace.

Stop searching. Start finding.

Access comparable projects, climate evidence, and policy alignment — in minutes, fully cited.

Request Access Talk to us