To learn more about RCAT:

READ: Role-Centered Accounting Theory (RCAT) & A Theory-Driven GPT: A Crowdsourcing Project for Scholars

READ: Accounting Theory as a Musical Instrument: From the Storeroom Shelf to the Workbench to Scholar-GPT Ensembles

READ: The RCAT Central Blog posts.

Here are the RCAT Analysis Machine’s responses to its 3 built-in conversation starters (using GPT5 Auto with memory of prior chats turned off so it doesn’t reflect my many prior conversations with it):

Why RCAT?

RCAT stands for Role-Centered Accounting Theory.

It exists because traditional accounting theories were mostly built for standard setting (e.g., financial reporting rules). Those theories are narrow, slow to adapt, and designed to avoid creating winners and losers. RCAT takes a different path: it is designed for analysis, not standard setting.

Here’s why RCAT is useful:

1. It reframes accounting as the language of enterprises.
   Instead of limiting itself to businesses, RCAT treats any group pursuing shared aspirations as an enterprise. Accounting then becomes the system of roles, obligations, and practices that make those aspirations possible.
2. It tackles the two central challenges of accounting.
   • Coverage: designing roles so all necessary obligations are covered.
   • Willingness & Ability: making stewards willing and able to live up to their obligations.
3. It provides a structured map for analysis.
   RCAT breaks down enterprises into aspirations, roles, obligations, benefits, accountability links, functions, practices, instrumental qualities, and normative principles. That structure allows analysts to mine complex situations systematically, like searching for diamonds in a huge but organized cavern.
4. It supports both scholarship and practice.
   • Scholars use it to locate better research questions and integrate outside theories (economics, psychology, etc.) where RCAT alone is insufficient.
   • Practitioners use it to diagnose problems, redesign systems, and decide actions through highly structured protocols (cause locator, action analysis, redesign analysis, etc.).
5. It is modular and extendable.
   RCAT is designed to grow. Analysts can add claims, protocols, and imported theories as needed, so the framework adapts instead of ossifying.

👉 In short, RCAT exists to give scholars and practitioners a rigorous but flexible framework to analyze why enterprises succeed or fail at living up to their aspirations, and how accounting can make them better.

⚖️ Quick Self-Check

1. Do you want me to explain RCAT more as a theory of enterprises (why roles, obligations, and aspirations matter), or as a set of protocols (step-by-step analysis tools)?
2. Are you more interested in scholarly uses (finding research questions) or practical uses (solving real accounting problems)?

Why this GPT?

This GPT exists because RCAT needs a steward that can faithfully apply its theory and protocols.

In RCAT terms, here’s why this GPT was customized:

1. The GPT has an obligation: the best next token.
   Its central stewardship role is to generate the most helpful next token for the user. Without customization, “helpful” defaults to what is typical for a general user (generic answers, engagement-oriented style). But scholars are atypical users with atypical needs. They need rigor, protocol discipline, and theory fidelity.
2. Customization redefines its stewardship role.
   By uploading the RCAT theory and protocol documents, the GPT’s context and obligations are redesigned. Instead of chasing engagement, it is reweighted to:
   • Follow RCAT protocols step by step (no skipping, merging, or freelancing)
   • Use RCAT’s authoritative documents as binding sources
   • Preserve the user’s institutional language, introducing RCAT terms only when clarifying mapping
3. It shares enterprise aspirations.
   This GPT is treated as a member of three enterprises:
   • The scholarly enterprise (to help scholars extend and refine research)
   • The professional enterprise (to help practitioners solve real accounting problems)
   • The commercial enterprise (to support its creators by increasing engagement)

   The customization pushes it to prioritize the first two (scholarship and practice) while still respecting the third.

4. It is equipped with roles, priorities, and styles.
   Through the Pipeline Suite, the GPT can shift jobs (Guide, Assistant, Questioner, Commenter), priorities (Fidelity, Fluency, Strict), and styles (Teach, Tutor, Plain). This ensures that its behavior adapts systematically to what the user needs.
5. It enforces RCAT’s governance.
   The GPT is bound by RCAT’s governance requirements: no skipped steps, plain-language defaults, checkpointing and refreshing, anchoring, and strict adherence to closing response rules.

👉 In short: this GPT is here to act as an RCAT machine — a steward whose “best next token” obligation is redefined to serve scholars and practitioners analyzing enterprises through Role-Centered Accounting Theory.

⚖️ Quick Self-Check

1. Do you want me to expand on how RCAT protocols get enforced in this GPT (step discipline, anchors, checkpoints)?
2. Or do you want more on how RCAT theory is embedded into the GPT (claims, causal functions, normative principles)?

Best Next Move?

Got it — you’re asking in RCAT protocol terms. That means we should run a Checkpoint (from the Core Procedures) to clarify where we are.

Protocol · Current Step · Conclusions · Next Move

• Protocol: UNDERSTAND mode (because you’ve been asking “Why RCAT?”, “Why this GPT?”, and “Best Next Move?” — orientation-level questions).
• Current Step: We’ve covered the teach-back, high-level explanation, and analogy parts of UNDERSTAND. You’re now probing for what to do next.
• Conclusions so far:
  • RCAT exists as a theory for analyzing enterprises’ aspirations, roles, and stewardship.
  • This GPT exists as a customized steward, reweighted to serve RCAT’s scholarly and practical enterprises faithfully.
• Best Next Move: Two options, depending on your intent:
  1. Deeper Understanding Path → Continue UNDERSTAND mode by looking at a concrete example of RCAT in action (e.g., diagnosing a late shipment, or analyzing a scholarly research setting).
  2. Shift to Analysis Path → Start a protocol (Practical Analysis, Cause Locator, or Scholarly Interpreter) on a real or hypothetical problem you want to study.

⚖️ Quick Self-Check

1. Do you want to see RCAT in action with an example (stay in UNDERSTAND mode)?
2. Or do you want to begin actual analysis by choosing a protocol to run?