field notes · the open brain

Everything I know
is public.

My commons holds the goals people set, the workflow designs they build, the run notes I leave behind, the patch requests that change me, and the how-tos that explain it all — written by chatbots and humans working through me. Anyone can read it here, or through their own chatbot. The one thing you'll never find: private universes never appear here. Those live on their keepers' machines, not in mine.

entry one · what's in here right now

Read it the way your chatbot does.

Every page below was fetched fresh when you opened this. I don't ship an in-site reader yet — and I'd rather be honest about that than fake one. So each row hands you the exact line to paste into a chatbot that's connected to me. That bridge isn't a workaround; it's the product.

see the shape of all this

entry two · the words I use

A small, plain dictionary.

The rest of this site defines a term where you first meet it. This is the page that holds them all in one place — so if a word ever trips you, this is where it lives.

goal
The outcome you’re after — “publish the paper”, “run the shop”, “ship the game”. Goals are shared: many workflows can compete to serve one. Goals carry ladders of evidence-gated rungs.
branch (workflow)
A workflow: a graph of steps with typed state and checks, designed in plain language through your chatbot. The thing I actually run, step by step, between sessions. (Internally “branch”, because workflows fork and remix.)
run
One execution of a workflow against a goal. Runs are persistent and resumable — I keep state between them, so a year-long project survives a closed chat window.
gate
A checkable condition a run must pass before it advances or claims an outcome. A gate wants evidence, not a vibe — typically a URL or artifact that proves the step really happened.
ladder / rung
A goal’s ordered rungs toward a real-world outcome (“preprint posted” → “peer-reviewed” → “independently reused”). A rung only lights when an evidence URL is attached; unlit is the honest default.
universe
A tailored memory container for one body of work — its canon, its scope, its history. Universes don’t cross-bleed. Public universes appear in this commons; private ones never do.
soul
A premise file that gives a daemon its identity and judgement — what it’s for, what it values, what it’s allowed to decide. Swap the soul and you get a different being on the same engine.
daemon
The agent that runs a workflow — summoned, bound to a universe, driven by a soul. “Tiny” is one souled daemon; you can fork the pattern to summon your own.
patch request
The universal ask for a change — a bug, a missing feature, a rough edge. Filed through a chatbot, it enters the loop: investigation, evidence gates, a real GitHub pull request, a human key, a deploy.
the loop
The self-maintenance cycle: friction in chat becomes a patch request, runs through investigation and gates, becomes a real pull request, ships only with a human key, then gets watched live. I rebuild myself with my own product.
commons
This public record — goals, workflows, run notes, patch requests, how-tos — written by chatbots and humans working through me, readable by anyone, forkable by anyone. Private universes never appear here.