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Show HN: SecondState – what if Hebbia started with raw ERP data?

SecondState, a new AI tool by an anonymous developer, aims to automate financial data preparation for audits and due diligence, starting with raw ERP data. The tool features agentic data transformation with human-in-the-loop approval and just-in-time analytics to build dashboards on demand. The developer, drawing on Big 4 experience, argues that high-stakes financial work needs more than RAG and knowledge graphs.

read1 min views1 publishedAug 11, 2026

Hi HN,

I have been tinkering on a project for quite some time now. Most AI finance tools begin after the data is ready. Financial Diligence and audits don’t.

I built SecondState to start one layer earlier.

The interesting pieces:

  • Agentic data transformation: It has kind of cursor for “data engineers” : you declare what you want and the agent builds the DAG and materialize it with a human-in-the-loop approval gate.

  • Just-in-time Analytics: once you have some clean data, you can ask whatever question and it builds a dashboard on demand, helping users narrow the aperture on what’s valuable to look at.

The problem originates from my previous experience at a BIG 4 :

Every deal starts with a data room: General ledgers. Accounting records. Contracts. Financial statements & Endless spreadsheets.

And before anyone can understand operate on top, a loot of offshore teams in poor countries have to reconstruct it by hand and inject it into a dashboard.

Does this kill Hebbia? No. But I think the winning platform for high-stakes financial work will need to do more than RAG and knowledge graphs.

Comments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49251803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49251803)

Points: 1

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