Where Hidden Companies Come to Light
ShellFinder is an open-source forensic AI platform designed to map, analyze, and reconstruct the corporate ecosystems surrounding OTC companies.
ShellFinder follows the principle of following the people, relationships, assets, and transactions rather than relying solely on stock tickers. The platform builds interconnected profiles of companies, founders, officers, directors, shareholders, subsidiaries, assets, filings, legal events, and other publicly available information.
The system is designed as a modular platform. Core modules provide the foundational corporate intelligence, entity resolution, financial analysis, knowledge graph, AI analysis, and investigative capabilities. Optional plugin modules allow additional data sources, jurisdictions, analytical models, and specialized investigative capabilities to be added without changing the core platform.
ShellFinder is designed to:
- Build comprehensive profiles of OTC companies.
- Reconstruct corporate histories from incorporation through the present.
- Identify founders, officers, directors, and other corporate participants.
- Track relationships between people and companies across time.
- Map subsidiaries, affiliates, ownership interests, and corporate relationships.
- Track publicly disclosed securities transactions and ownership changes.
- Identify share issuance, dilution, and capital structure changes.
- Map disclosed real estate, intellectual property, equipment, and other assets.
- Connect companies and individuals to publicly available legal and regulatory records.
- Detect unusual patterns, anomalies, and corporate network relationships.
- Preserve historical versions of corporate relationships and events.
- Provide AI-assisted investigation and research tools.
- Maintain evidence and source provenance for generated findings.
- Support open-source community research and independent verification.
ShellFinder uses a modular architecture consisting of:
- Core Platform
- Core Intelligence Modules
- Core Data Modules
- AI Analysis Modules
- Investigation and Visualization Modules
- Optional Plugin Modules
- API and Integration Layer
The core system provides the foundational capabilities required to operate ShellFinder. Plugins extend the platform with additional data sources and specialized functionality.
The Data Ingestion Module manages the collection and normalization of publicly available information.
- SEC filing ingestion
- OTC market data ingestion
- Corporate registry ingestion
- Public company disclosures
- Court and legal records
- Regulatory records
- Public property records
- Patent and trademark records
- Public news and press releases
- Public social media data where permitted
- Historical document ingestion
- Scheduled data collection
- Incremental updates
- Duplicate detection
- Source metadata preservation
Every imported record should retain its original source, retrieval date, document identifier, and applicable provenance information.
The Corporate Identity Module establishes the canonical identity of every company tracked by ShellFinder.
- Legal company name
- Former company names
- Ticker symbols
- Former ticker symbols
- Trading symbols
- Jurisdiction of incorporation
- Incorporation date
- Corporate status
- Corporate addresses
- Registered agents
- Subsidiaries
- Parent companies
- Affiliates
- Successor entities
- Predecessor entities
- Mergers
- Acquisitions
- Reverse mergers
- Corporate reorganizations
- Corporate name changes
The module maintains historical identities rather than replacing historical records when a company changes its name or ticker.
The Founder & Leadership Module creates historical profiles of individuals associated with companies.
- Founders
- Incorporators
- Original directors
- Officers
- Current directors
- Former directors
- Executives
- Controlling persons
- Significant shareholders where publicly disclosed
- Beneficial owners where publicly disclosed
- Executive tenure
- Board tenure
- Historical positions
- Relationships between executives and companies
ShellFinder distinguishes between verified founders, documented early officers, and AI-inferred relationships so that conclusions are not presented as established facts without supporting evidence.
The Entity Resolution Module connects records that may represent the same person, company, address, or organization.
- Name normalization
- Corporate name matching
- Historical company matching
- Individual identity matching
- Address matching
- Registered-agent matching
- Officer overlap detection
- Director overlap detection
- Subsidiary matching
- Corporate successor matching
- Duplicate record detection
- Confidence scoring
- Human verification workflows
Entity resolution must preserve uncertainty rather than automatically treating a probabilistic match as a confirmed identity.
The Corporate Genealogy Module reconstructs the historical lineage of companies.
- Company origin tracking
- Name-change history
- Ticker history
- Reverse merger reconstruction
- Acquisition history
- Spin-offs
- Corporate reorganizations
- Successor and predecessor relationships
- Historical leadership
- Historical ownership
- Corporate lineage timelines
Users can reconstruct the state of a corporate entity at a particular point in time.
The Ownership & Securities Module tracks publicly disclosed ownership and securities information.
- Insider transactions
- Forms 3, 4, and 5 where applicable
- Beneficial ownership disclosures
- Institutional ownership where available
- Share issuance
- Outstanding shares
- Authorized shares
- Dilution events
- Convertible securities
- Warrants
- Options where disclosed
- Restricted securities
- Stock-based compensation
- Ownership changes
- Capital structure changes
The module records the source document supporting each ownership or transaction record.
The Financial Intelligence Module analyzes publicly disclosed financial information.
- Revenue analysis
- Expense analysis
- Cash analysis
- Debt analysis
- Liabilities
- Assets
- Equity
- Cash-flow analysis
- Related-party transactions
- Inter-company transactions
- Revenue concentration
- Share issuance analysis
- Dilution analysis
- Financial trend analysis
- Capital structure analysis
- Historical financial comparisons
ShellFinder does not treat financial indicators as proof of misconduct. Analytical results are presented as signals requiring verification.
The Asset Intelligence Module maps publicly disclosed or legally accessible information about company and related-party assets.
- Real estate
- Property ownership
- Property addresses
- Property transfers
- Intellectual property
- Patents
- Trademarks
- Copyright information where available
- Equipment
- Inventory
- Vehicles
- Vessels
- Aircraft
- Mining or industrial assets
- Asset transfers
- Asset relationships
Asset records include source provenance and confidence information.
The Legal & Regulatory Intelligence Module connects companies and individuals with publicly available legal and regulatory records.
- Federal litigation
- State litigation
- Bankruptcy records
- Regulatory actions
- SEC enforcement records
- FINRA actions
- CFTC actions
- Administrative proceedings
- Judgments
- Liens where legally accessible
- Settlements
- Corporate compliance events
- Regulatory filing deficiencies
- Legal-document extraction
- Legal timeline reconstruction
Legal records are presented as documented events and should not be interpreted by ShellFinder as proof of wrongdoing unless the underlying record establishes that conclusion.
The Address & Geographic Intelligence Module analyzes relationships between companies, people, and physical locations.
- Corporate addresses
- Registered-agent addresses
- Executive addresses where legally available
- Shared corporate addresses
- Shared registered-agent addresses
- Property locations
- Geographic clustering
- Corporate concentration by jurisdiction
- Historical address changes
- Address reuse detection
- Geographic relationship graphs
The system should apply privacy and legal restrictions to personal-address data and avoid exposing sensitive information unnecessarily.
The Knowledge Graph Module connects ShellFinder's entities and events into an interconnected corporate graph.
- Company
- Person
- Founder
- Officer
- Director
- Shareholder
- Subsidiary
- Parent company
- Asset
- Property
- Filing
- Transaction
- Security
- Court case
- Regulatory action
- Address
- Intellectual property
- Organization
- News event
- founded_by
- incorporated_by
- officer_of
- director_of
- shareholder_of
- owns
- beneficially_owns
- subsidiary_of
- parent_of
- successor_of
- predecessor_of
- merged_with
- acquired
- acquired_by
- located_at
- registered_at
- filed
- disclosed_in
- involved_in
- transferred_to
- shares_address_with
- mentioned_in
All graph relationships should support dates, sources, confidence levels, and provenance.
The Historical Snapshot Module allows users to reconstruct the known state of a company or network at a specific point in time.
- Historical company profiles
- Historical officer lists
- Historical board composition
- Historical ownership
- Historical ticker information
- Historical subsidiaries
- Historical assets
- Historical filings
- Historical transactions
- Historical network graphs
- Point-in-time investigations
This prevents current information from overwriting historically relevant information.
Uses AI-assisted extraction to convert unstructured documents into structured records.
- PDF parsing
- Filing extraction
- Table extraction
- Named entity recognition
- Company identification
- Person identification
- Address extraction
- Transaction extraction
- Ownership extraction
- Relationship extraction
- Document classification
- Document summarization
AI-generated information must retain links to the underlying source material.
The Relationship Analysis Module analyzes connections across the knowledge graph.
- Founder networks
- Officer networks
- Board networks
- Corporate clusters
- Shared-address networks
- Shared-agent networks
- Ownership networks
- Subsidiary networks
- Asset networks
- Cross-company relationships
- Temporal relationship analysis
- Network centrality
- Cluster detection
The Anomaly Detection Module identifies unusual patterns for further investigation.
- Unusual share issuance
- Sudden ownership changes
- Unusual filing activity
- Rapid corporate restructuring
- Repeated officer transitions
- Repeated address usage
- Unusual financial changes
- Unexpected asset transfers
- Network expansion anomalies
- Trading-volume anomalies where appropriate data is available
Anomaly detection produces investigative signals, not accusations.
The Pattern Analysis Module compares historical corporate behavior across companies and networks.
- Repeated corporate structures
- Repeated leadership patterns
- Recurring registered agents
- Recurring addresses
- Repeated merger structures
- Similar corporate filings
- Similar capital structures
- Similar transaction patterns
- Historical pattern matching
- Cross-company similarity analysis
The AI Investigation Assistant allows users to query ShellFinder using natural language.
- "Show all companies associated with this founder."
- "Which officers have served on both boards?"
- "Show the corporate history of this ticker."
- "What companies share this registered address?"
- "Show the ownership changes over the last ten years."
- "Which subsidiaries are connected to this company?"
- "Show all documented legal actions involving this company."
- "Reconstruct this company's network as of 2018."
- "Show unusual changes in share issuance."
- "Find relationships between these two companies."
The assistant should distinguish between:
- Verified facts
- Source-derived information
- Probabilistic relationships
- AI-generated analysis
- User-submitted information
The Risk Signal Module organizes measurable indicators into transparent analytical categories.
- Reporting history
- Corporate structure changes
- Ownership changes
- Dilution
- Related-party transactions
- Legal events
- Regulatory events
- Officer network concentration
- Repeated corporate relationships
- Unusual financial changes
- Asset transfers
- Trading anomalies
Risk signals should be explainable and traceable to their underlying evidence.
Provides chronological views of corporate activity.
- Incorporation
- Name changes
- Ticker changes
- Founder appointments
- Officer changes
- Board changes
- Mergers
- Acquisitions
- Financing events
- Share issuances
- Insider transactions
- Asset transfers
- Lawsuits
- Regulatory actions
- Bankruptcy events
- Major filings
Users can monitor entities and receive alerts when relevant events occur.
- Companies
- Tickers
- Founders
- Officers
- Directors
- Shareholders
- Assets
- Addresses
- Corporate networks
- New filing
- Officer change
- Director change
- Ownership change
- Insider transaction
- Share issuance
- Corporate name change
- Ticker change
- Merger
- Acquisition
- Legal action
- Regulatory action
- New corporate relationship
- New asset relationship
- Significant anomaly
Generates structured investigative reports.
- Company profile
- Founder profile
- Officer profile
- Corporate genealogy
- Ownership report
- Asset report
- Legal history
- Financial history
- Network analysis
- Historical snapshot
- Risk signal report
- Investigation report
- Markdown
- HTML
- JSON
- CSV
- GraphML
Interactive visualization of:
Person → Company → Subsidiary → Asset → Filing → Transaction → Legal Event
Features include:
- Interactive graphs
- Relationship filtering
- Date filtering
- Entity filtering
- Source filtering
- Confidence filtering
- Network expansion
- Network clustering
Displays corporate and asset relationships geographically.
- Company locations
- Registered-agent locations
- Property locations
- Corporate clusters
- Geographic timelines
- Jurisdiction analysis
- Historical price data where available
- Trading volume
- Share issuance
- Dilution
- Ownership changes
- Revenue
- Debt
- Assets
- Cash
- Financial trends
Every significant ShellFinder record should be traceable to its underlying source.
- Source
- Source URL where permitted
- Document identifier
- Filing date
- Retrieval date
- Source type
- Extracted text
- Supporting passage or location
- Data transformation history
- Confidence level
- Verification status
ShellFinder should never silently transform uncertain information into established fact.
Allows users and contributors to review AI-generated relationships and claims.
- Unverified
- AI identified
- Source supported
- Human verified
- Disputed
- Rejected
- Superseded
Users should be able to inspect the evidence supporting a relationship or claim.
Maintains historical versions of the ShellFinder dataset.
- Dataset snapshots
- Record history
- Change tracking
- Correction history
- Contributor attribution
- Source updates
- Rollbacks
- Historical comparisons
Allows researchers to contribute:
- Sources
- Corrections
- Corporate relationships
- Historical information
- Documents
- Entity matches
- Research notes
- Verification results
Contributions should retain contributor attribution and an audit history.
Allows contributors to review disputed or uncertain records.
- Evidence review
- Correction requests
- Verification workflows
- Dispute records
- Contributor history
- Source comparison
- Moderation tools
ShellFinder provides programmatic access to its data and analytical capabilities.
- Company lookup
- Person lookup
- Founder lookup
- Officer lookup
- Ownership lookup
- Asset lookup
- Filing lookup
- Legal event lookup
- Network queries
- Historical snapshots
- Search
- Alerts
- Reports
- Graph queries
API access should enforce appropriate rate limits and permissions.
ShellFinder's core functionality remains independent from optional external integrations.
Plugins can extend the system without requiring changes to the core modules.
Examples:
- Additional securities markets
- Additional corporate registries
- International registries
- Property databases
- Court databases
- Patent databases
- Trademark databases
- News providers
- Public social platforms
Add support for:
- Canadian corporate records
- United Kingdom corporate records
- European corporate records
- Asia-Pacific corporate records
- Additional U.S. state records
Examples:
- Advanced financial models
- Specialized anomaly detection
- Network analysis
- Sentiment analysis
- Document classification
- Specialized entity resolution
- Industry-specific intelligence
Examples:
- Aircraft registries
- Vessel registries
- Vehicle registries
- Mining records
- Environmental records
- Zoning records
- Intellectual property systems
Examples:
- Advanced graph visualizations
- Geographic dashboards
- Three-dimensional network views
- Time-lapse networks
- Specialized financial charts
Support alternative:
- Local AI models
- Hosted AI models
- Embedding models
- OCR models
- Document models
- Classification models
- Entity-resolution models
Plugins should use defined interfaces and must not compromise the provenance, security, or integrity of the core system.
Optional plugins should:
- Have a defined manifest.
- Declare their data sources.
- Declare required permissions.
- Preserve source provenance.
- Follow ShellFinder's data model.
- Provide documentation.
- Include tests.
- Identify licensing restrictions.
- Respect source terms of use.
- Avoid silently modifying core records.
- Clearly distinguish plugin-generated analysis from verified source data.
ShellFinder follows several foundational principles:
Important claims should be traceable to their underlying sources.
AI inference must be distinguishable from documented facts.
Historical information should not be overwritten by current information.
Entity relationships should have confidence levels.
Risk signals should be explainable.
Users should be able to challenge and correct records.
Patterns and anomalies are investigative signals, not determinations of fraud, criminal conduct, or wrongdoing.
ShellFinder is designed around publicly available and legally accessible information.
The platform should:
- Respect applicable privacy laws.
- Respect data-source terms of use.
- Minimize unnecessary exposure of personal information.
- Avoid publishing sensitive personal information when it is not necessary.
- Distinguish public corporate information from personal information.
- Provide correction and dispute mechanisms where appropriate.
- Preserve source context.
- Avoid presenting allegations as established facts.
ShellFinder should implement:
- Secure API authentication
- Role-based access control
- Audit logging
- Data validation
- Source integrity checks
- Secure plugin isolation
- Dependency scanning
- Secrets management
- Rate limiting
- Input validation
- Database access controls
ShellFinder is designed to support a replaceable technology stack.
Potential components include:
- Python for data processing and AI services
- PostgreSQL for structured data
- Graph database for relationship analysis
- OpenSearch or equivalent for document search
- Object storage for source documents
- React-based dashboard
- Graph visualization framework
- REST and GraphQL APIs
- Docker for deployment
- Local AI models for privacy-preserving analysis
Specific implementations may change without changing the underlying ShellFinder specification.
ShellFinder can support multiple deployment configurations.
Designed for individual researchers and private investigations.
Organizations can operate their own ShellFinder instance and data infrastructure.
Universities, journalists, and independent researchers can operate specialized installations.
Organizations can deploy ShellFinder with controlled access, private data sources, and specialized plugins.
The ShellFinder architecture separates foundational capabilities from specialized integrations.
- Corporate identity
- Founder and leadership mapping
- Entity resolution
- Corporate genealogy
- Ownership and securities
- Financial intelligence
- Asset intelligence
- Legal intelligence
- Knowledge graph
- AI document analysis
- Relationship analysis
- Anomaly detection
- Historical reconstruction
- Provenance
- Investigation tools
- Reporting
- API
- Dashboard
- Community verification
- Additional markets
- International jurisdictions
- Specialized registries
- Additional property systems
- Specialized legal databases
- Social data providers
- News providers
- Advanced AI models
- Specialized financial models
- Additional asset registries
- Advanced visualization systems
- Industry-specific intelligence
This separation allows ShellFinder to remain modular, maintainable, and extensible while allowing users to build specialized investigative environments.
Contributions are welcome from developers, researchers, data scientists, journalists, and other contributors interested in improving corporate transparency and investigative technology.
Please review CONTRIBUTING.md before submitting changes.
Contributions should prioritize:
- Verifiable information
- Reproducible analysis
- Source attribution
- Data integrity
- Privacy
- Security
- Clear documentation
- Test coverage
- Fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant system
- Copyleft enforced for network deployments
- Required attribution:
- Roxanne Ardary
- https://www.roxanneardary.com/
- Specification Branding License (SBL)
- Attribution-free commercial deployment
- Pricing based on scale, usage, and deployment scope
- https://roxanneardary.com/shellfinder/
ShellFinder is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).
By contributing to this project, you agree that your contributions will also be released under this license.
Please note the following:
- All contributions must comply with the AGPL-3.0+ terms.
- Under Section 7 of the license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works must preserve attribution to:
Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com. - ShellFinder specificiations are free to use with attribution. A Specification Branding License can be negotiated upon request.
- The project's notice.md file tracks attribution requirements and contributor acknowledgments.
Any update that adds new contributors or modifies attribution should also updatenotice.md. - When submitting a pull request, ensure that any new files maintain the attribution headers where applicable.
- Network-deployed versions of this software must also remain fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant, including exposure of source code modifications when applicable under the license.
For full legal details, please refer to the AGPL-3.0+ license and the project's notice.md file.