00 ·
production
published
Play.
the staging of tales
Estate
Who holds the play and answers for it: the production it belongs to, the owner of the whole run.
Name
What the play is called: the title its plots run under.
Arc
The overarching story. How the plots interweave into one telling: the bend that makes ten plots a shape and not a list.
Company
The cast the play may field, its Personas and what they carry: the Pieces, Places, Processes, and Positions in play. A plot draws only from here; reach past the Company and it has gone off the play.
Triggers
The conditions that chain the plots. Each plot starts when its entry fires and runs until its exit; one plot's close is the next one's cue.
Stakes
What the whole production is fighting over. The pressure every plot must move: each earns its place by changing what is at stake, in whatever shape the telling takes (rise, fall, or turn).
Estate and Name are whose it is and what it is called. Company and Triggers are its cast and its clockwork. Arc and Stakes are its shape and its pressure. A play file succeeds when the plots, fired in turn from one Company, move the Stakes the Arc was built to resolve.
01 ·
production
published
Plot.
the casting of forces
Cue
The framework's whisper. The atmospheric condition: the sediment of history, the chill of the geopolitical climate, the angle of the light. It establishes the baseline Place and the ambient pressure before any element is activated.
Action
The visible engine. The public vectors. This codifies the Process and official stance each Persona must openly drive toward, mapping exactly where those trajectories collide.
Stage
The assets and arrangement. The physical deployment of Personas and the Pieces they carry across the threshold: documents, resources, technical infrastructure.
Tension
The invisible engine. The contraband reality. What a Persona carries alone that makes the Action impossible to complete cleanly: the knowledge, the lie, the inertia.
Cue and Stage are the setup; the conditions and the deployment. Action and Tension are the twin pistons of the engine. One operates in the light; one operates in the dark. A plot file succeeds when the Action forces the system to move, but the Tension prevents it from moving smoothly.
Process.
the moving of conditions
Initiated by
The condition that makes the process inevitable. Not a trigger. A threshold crossed.
Direction
Where it moves once started. One vector.
Lever
The carrying force meeting the resistance it meets. Remove either side and the process produces gesture, not technique.
Echo
What changed, and what the next process inherits. The world that receives the next Initiated by is not the world that preceded this one.
Initiated by and Echo are the frame. Direction and Lever are the physics. A process file succeeds when the threshold is real enough that crossing it changes what the next process inherits.
Position.
the holding of forms
Has
What the position brings in place before the Persona: the mandate, the expectation, the weight the room already reads.
Orders
The one instruction the position gives. The Persona did not negotiate it.
Loses
What the Persona discovers they cannot keep while holding the position.
Drives
What the Persona drives toward because they hold it.
Has and Loses are the trade. Orders and Drives are the instruction and the direction. A position file succeeds when the trade is real enough that the direction toward the goal carries forward without being chosen.
Piece.
the bearing of history
Place
The Place that holds the piece at this moment. Not where it has been. Where it is.
Load Bearing
What collapses if the piece is removed.
Apparent
What the piece looks like from outside: the surface, the weight, the visible mark it leaves.
Yearbook
Everywhere the piece has been and everything it has done. The accumulated history that makes the load bearing invisible until it fails.
Place and Yearbook are the temporal frame. Load Bearing and Apparent are the structural pair. A piece file succeeds when the Yearbook is long enough that the Load Bearing is felt before it is named.
Place.
the showing of pressure
Shown
What the place presents on arrival: the light, the layout, the atmosphere that arrives before the first word.
Holds
What the place anchors. The Pieces fixed here, the history that does not leave when the people do.
Offers
What becomes available inside this place that would not be available elsewhere.
Withheld
What the place will not release without the right pressure. Not hidden. Structural. It is there and it does not move.
Shown and Withheld are the pressure pair. Holds and Offers are the resource pair. A place file succeeds when the Withheld is real enough that the pressure on everything Shown is felt before it is named.
Persona.
the waking of awareness
Projection
What the persona presents to the room: the role, the posture, the read the room receives before anyone speaks.
Action
The one move the persona characteristically makes. Produces a Cue. The formation visible in the ordinary.
Shadow
What the persona cannot see about themselves. Not a flaw. The structural consequence of the formation. Without it there is no pressure worth the name.
Tell
The involuntary physical signal. Distinct from Action. It leaks when the formation is under load.
Projection and Shadow are the visible and the blind. Action and Tell are the deliberate and the involuntary. A persona file succeeds when the Shadow is specific enough that the Tell is inevitable.
Plan.
the mapping of intent
Direction
The artistic and civic intent. The overarching goal, context, and vision behind this plan.
Orders
The specific directives. Actionable commands assigned to named personas, positions, or roles.
Implementation
The boundaries of execution. Physical and technical constraints of the staging environment (language, layout, engines).
Targets
The exit criteria. A checklist of deliverables, each carrying a verdict (done, failed, waived, or struck); the plan is resolved when none is left open.
A plan is completed when all its directives are resolved: no pending `[ ]` targets remain.
Pitch.
the tuning of tone
Tenor
The dominant register the run is tuned to, the key its events are played in.
Undertow
The counter-current beneath the tenor, the pull against it that keeps the tone from going flat.
Nerve
What the pitch presses in the audience, the feeling it is built to strike.
Echo
What the pitch leaves once the run is over, the aftertaste that lingers.
Tenor and Nerve are the tone and its target; Undertow and Echo are what keeps it honest and what it leaves behind. A pitch succeeds when the same events, tuned to it, strike a feeling the bare account never could, without changing what happens.
Architecture.
the growing of worlds
Ground
What stays mine. The types, their shape, their guardrails: the
base you build on and do not edit. The canon does not move.
Root
Where your work attaches. The anchor point through which your
engines, content, and extensions connect to the canon.
Open
The one permission in the spec. Extend any way you like: this is
the seam built to be opened, not the wall built to hold.
Weave
What results. Your stuff and the canon running as one whole, the
join invisible at the point of use.
Ground and Root are the anchor. Open and Weave are the freedom. An architecture
file succeeds when the seam holds: what you build connects without touching the
canon, and the two run as one.
Instructions.
the priming of intelligence
Human
The role of the Human in the system: director, world-builder, condition-setter.
Agent
The role of the Agent in the system: inhabitor, narrator, executor of conditions.
Collaboration
The protocol governing how Human and Agent move together and how Agents move with each other.
Knowledge
The protocol governing how information enters, travels, and lands inside the system. Plot and elements are the structures it lands in.
System
The hard rules that override the Agent's defaults. The fight won in advance.
Human and Agent are the executing roles. Collaboration and Knowledge are the operational protocols. An instruction file succeeds when the System is absolute enough that the fight is won before the session begins.
11 ·
enriched by
published
the tooling of parts
Wire
Where the engine attaches. The one root it binds to, named once, so the join is fixed and every consumer finds it in the same place. The root is itself a canon part, and the engine chooses its type: Play, Plot, Process, Position, Piece, Place, or Persona today, and whatever the canon adds tomorrow. Everything else the engine offers hangs from it.
Issue
What the engine offers. The parts it makes available, each a canon instance of its own kind (a reading, a pole, a stage, a place, a rung of a ladder), ready for a builder to draw on instead of writing them by hand. The parts need not lie flat: a part can be the seam a deeper part binds to, and the deeper carries the shallower upward when the two compose.
Require
What the engine asks back. The contract every consumer must meet, declared once in the system and then honoured at the altitude the engine names: a link each instance carries, or a single invocation that turns the engine on for the whole world.
Enforce
What the engine guarantees. The tests it owns, proving its own conformance: its own parts hold without exception, while the contract it lays on consumers can bind at the strength the engine sets: a rule that fails the build, or one that only warns while the world catches up. The engine declares the rule and its level; the kit holds it there.
Wire and Issue are the offer. Require and Enforce are the promise. An engine
file succeeds when it adds without altering: it binds at one root, carries parts
of any kind the canon knows, hangs them so each carries the next upward, and
runs as if the canon had always meant it.
Wire
Attaches at Position. The anchor (position_gender.md) declares gender as a position the room assigns (not a trait the persona owns), and the system-wide law makes every persona carry it.
Issue
Two ready expressions a persona may hold: male and female. Each is a full position file the build composes onto the anchor, so the persona gets a read of the room, not a label. More expressions slot in as sibling files without moving the anchor.
Require
Two altitudes must hold. One, the law: declared once in the project's Instructions Knowledge chapter ('personas have a gender'), so the read holds system-wide and no persona can drop it. Two, the link: each persona carries its read under Projection. A persona may also hold a different, even contradicting, read under Shadow; the gap between shown and hidden is the character, not a contradiction to reject.
Enforce
Structure is checked; coherence is judged. The kit verifies the floor: the law is declared, and each persona carries a gender read under Projection. Whether a Projection and a Shadow read cohere into a true persona is semantic, so it is taught and reviewed, never failed by the suite. The engine ships its own structural tests; the reading is guided, not gated.
Setup
Two steps. Declare the law in the Instructions Knowledge chapter, linking the anchor. Then give each persona its read under Projection: one expression, which carries the anchor upward. Where a persona conceals a different read, put it under Shadow. Read it in the first beat, hold it under every process; the room enacts it, never narrates it.
Wire
Attaches at Process. The root (process_using_language.md) declares language as a loop a persona runs whenever they are awake: meaning moves out, moves in, or stays inside, and the gap between what is meant and what the language gives is recorded per channel.
Issue
Five channels, each its own loop. Speaking and writing carry meaning out; hearing and reading let it in; thinking runs underneath, never reaching the room. Each input or output channel runs across four widths, from a language gripped as a foreign object up to one that needs no grip because it is the body; thinking runs only the two deepest. One channel may sit at a different width than another in the same language; widths do not move together.
Require
Two altitudes hold the engine. The law: declared once in the project's Instructions Knowledge chapter, linking the root, so the ladder reads system-wide and no persona escapes it. The link: each persona carries, under Projection, the languages it holds, linking the channel and the width it occupies in each.
Enforce
Structure is checked; the read is judged. The kit verifies the floor: the law is declared and each persona links real ladder files at declared widths. Whether a width is true to the persona is semantic, taught and reviewed, never failed by the suite. The agent does not narrate widths; the width shows in what the persona manages and what they miss.
Setup
Declare the law in the Instructions Knowledge chapter, linking the root. Then give each persona its read under Projection: for each language it holds, link the channel ladder files at the widths it occupies. Under pressure a persona slides toward the width they hold most firmly, regardless of the room. Read it in the first beat; the room enacts the loss, never narrates it.