Custody as Lock-In

A provider accumulating a customer's prompts and custom instructions is holding text. That text was written by the customer, describes the customer's own processes, and would function against any model. It is not proprietary data the supplier generated, it produces no network effect, and it creates no technical dependency. What holds the customer in place is simply that the filing cabinet sits on the vendor's premises. The arrangement is frequently described as a competitive position, and it withstands little examination: a genuine switching cost arises from something the incumbent has that a rival structurally cannot obtain, and an asset the customer created and could copy out tomorrow is not that. Custody is the whole mechanism.

Centralpoint removes the custody question entirely. Skills and prompts are records in the organization's own SQL environment, version-controlled and scoped by audience, and the vector index is built and held locally. Nothing about the arrangement depends on the organization's continued relationship with Oxcyon for the assets to remain readable, portable and usable — which is the only arrangement under which the word portable means anything.