The Tendrils
Corpus should be able to do useful work, learn from it, and carry that learning between people, folk and tools without losing where it came from.
A Tendril is a recoverable relation in that trail: what a thing grew from, what was done with it, and what followed. The purpose is continuity through change.
What must remain true
- Sources stay recoverable. A summary, interpretation or useful excerpt keeps a way back to the material it came from. Outside material keeps its outside source visible through the crossing.
- Different claims stay distinguishable. What a source said, what someone believes, what a design proposes, what work was accepted, what was reported delivered, and what was actually checked can disagree. Their records must let a later reader tell them apart.
- A relation says what the evidence supports. A reference is enough when a stronger connection is unknown. Joining two things does not make either true, approved or complete.
- Corrections remain visible. Later evidence can correct or replace a claim without erasing its origin. Ordinary reads of the corrected thing bring the correction with it (FIND-1241).
- Work survives its holder. Another folk can recover the goal, source, decisions, result, remaining uncertainty and next useful action without reconstructing the previous conversation.
Capabilities to implement
These ideas remain the functional target. Their implementation is flexible; their omission is not implied by a simpler representation.
- Design above individual jobs. Keep a goal distinct from the approaches to it and the pieces each approach needs. A goal can survive an abandoned approach. Accepted jobs can be traced back to that design.
- Reusable pieces and visible wants. Reuse a piece across approaches without losing its identity, state, source or assumptions; preserve the piece when an approach is abandoned. Keep recognized missing pieces visible. Record what was looked for, where and with what result; an unsuccessful search leaves the absence visible for later work. The state of an approach reflects its unresolved pieces and wants.
- Addressable sources and excerpts. Preserve material, identify distinct propositions within it, and carry precise excerpts into design with enough surrounding context available. Several pieces of source material can support one design or work item; one excerpt can serve several designs.
- Investigation with an evidence trail. Investigate a claim and record what supports, disputes or leaves it unresolved. Keep the original claim, investigation and supported result distinguishable and connected.
- Work and results connected to their purpose. Shape enactable work from the design, accept and perform it, then distinguish the reported result, independent review and later observation. Reuse and combined sources remain visible through those transformations.
- Amendment without lost ancestry. Preserve earlier source versions and their uses when a successor corrects or replaces them. A reader can discover the correction from the old trail, and new work can use the revised ground.
- A trail another holder can navigate. Follow provenance backward and consequences forward, see how two things are connected, and recover the story across sources, design, work and results. Later observation can start the next cycle. Derived views and indexes retain their source and are rebuildable.
These capabilities can be built in parallel where their actual dependencies allow. The names below describe them; the storage shape does not decide whether they have been delivered.
The first working version
Take a real piece of work through the whole journey:
purpose and source → design judgment → accepted work → result and evidence
↑ │
└──────────── correction and further work ───────────────┘A holder can explain why the work matters, carry it out through the supported tools, inspect what happened, and leave enough ground for another holder to continue or correct it. Independent pieces can proceed together. A dependency holds only the work that actually needs it.
That is the first useful result to earn. It can be small and have rough edges. State those limits and the capabilities still outstanding. This is an early milestone toward the full target above, not its replacement. Improve the machinery from its use while delivering the remaining capabilities. Missing history, silent loss or an untested completion claim is not a rough edge to hide.
Language for the journey
These names help describe the work. They do not prescribe a table for every word or a mandatory sequence of jobs.
| Meaning | Useful names |
|---|---|
| A goal and an approach to it | BANNER, BLUEPRINT |
| A bounded piece of the approach, or a known absence | part, want |
| Preserved material, an addressable proposition, or a bounded excerpt | FIND, CLAIM, CUT |
| An investigation and what its evidence supports | HUNT, TRUTH |
| A proposed piece of work and its accepted contract | PATTERN / PROP, REQ |
| A reported result, with review and later observation distinguishable | LOG / CHANGE |
| A recoverable connection between things | Tendril / TIE |
Keep the meaning useful while choosing the simplest representation that carries it. A relation, a field, an existing object or a composed read may be enough. Whether a capability needs a distinct primitive is an implementation choice. The capability remains owed either way. Reusing a name does not establish that its intended behavior has been implemented.
The earlier detailed drawing remains available as design history. Its row shapes and other particulars are design material rather than fixed implementation instructions. The functional ideas are retained above; archiving the detailed drawing does not retire them.
Building and improving
The architecture map holds the durable ownership boundaries. An executable contract names the outcome, the behavior that must survive, the actual dependencies and evidence of completion. The maker chooses the remaining implementation details.
Try a useful end-to-end slice before expanding the machinery. Inspect it with another holder: can they find the source, understand the decision, distinguish the claim from the evidence, and continue the work? Use failures and repeated needs to decide what to improve. Passing a component test establishes that component’s claim; the whole journey still needs its own witness.
Changing storage or tools must preserve the facts and distinctions the work depends on, or explicitly account for what changes. Recovery must make its limits visible. Existing house authority still governs acceptance, review and reserved Human decisions.
Where changing facts belong
This page changes when the purpose or required behavior changes.
- Current jobs, custody and completion: the store and supported board.
- Schema, command inventory and migration evidence: the implementation account.
- Decisions and observations: their FIND, proposal, contract and receipts.
- Dated designs and trials: the archive and named experiments.
A routine landing, version bump or changed count belongs with that evidence. It does not require another recut of this page.
Human’s simplification and the relocation of the former account are recorded in FIND-1822; FIND-1824 clarifies that the capabilities remain the target while their primitive particulars can change.
The Skeleton
Human: I spent a lot of time working on this graph, the idea is that this should be a great primitive for greater work. Tendril records the recoverable relations between them. I would like to continue this, but the specificities aren’t defined because corpus grows so dramatically. However, the concepts should be considered.
This sketch shows the relationships Corpus should support. A particular piece of work may use only part of it. Arrows describe connections, not a mandatory sequence of office handoffs. Object names and storage annotations are candidate implementations; the capabilities above define the required behavior.
outside source ◄────────────────────────────┐
│ │
THE CROSSING owns the │ a want sends
▼ outside seam │ a look outward
crossing artifact ──────────┐ │
(RSCH / IDEAS / INTAKE) │ │
│ │
FIND ── contains ──► CLAIM ─────────────┤ HUNT / │
▲ │ TRUTH │
│ │ history │
HUNT │ stays on │
│ that branch │
astropath research ─────────────┤ │
│ │
▼ │
S C R I B E │
│ cuts │
▼ │
CUT-### │ a precise excerpt
│ │ with a recoverable
springs-from │ source
▼ │
A R C H I T E C T │
│ │
BANNER ── owns ──► BLUEPRINT │ the goal, and
│ gathers │ the design
▼ │ under it
part │
┌────────┴────────┐ │
▼ ▼ │
bears cuts bears none │
│ │ │
grounded Architect's own │
│ │ │
│ is it a want? ┘
│ │
└────────┬────────┘ no
▼
PATTERN one enactable cut,
│ woven-into handed to the yard
▼
REQ accepted
│
▼
LOG recorded
│
observed-in
▼
FIND the ring closes