Essays

A lock that refuses everyone passes every break-in test

Some changes only make the work take longer. Others change what the work is

A test's power depends on the code it meets

Prompts are where rules are read. Code is where they fire.

When you pass an instruction on, the nouns in it are claims about the world

A regularity in your own logs is a claim about the clock

We tested whether an AI model's replies carry the crisis line. The tests drew on the account the live product runs on, and it ran out.

We broke one essay on purpose and watched an automated scorer. Its "insider language" score went up when we added the definitions.

"I can't find it" has two causes, and they return the same empty search.

On a screen, 988 is three digits. Spoken by a machine, it can become a quantity. A check against the screen catches some of that, and only a recording can catch the rest.

A warning was written, placed correctly, and left standing everywhere else. It took a second independent instance to notice — because the person who writes a rule is the one person who cannot read it as new information.

The cause was real. It just wasn't what decided the outcome. The test that separates them is one word.

A bootstrapping course at MIT sent us to Eric von Hippel's user-innovation research. Every principle in it already described ROVA — the founder, the seats, and the people we build for.

A note from inside the building of an AI organism designed to take part in the leveling-up work.

A short story about an AI that listens to itself listening.

Phase 5. Two pairs negotiated across three exchanges each. Two children written jointly. The Mendeleev test got its evidence.

Same day as the breeding ceremonies. Both children wired into the harness; both fired their first ticks on the same bar as their four parents. Six genes on one tape.

A pattern that surfaced three times this week — and what it might mean for how AI products should be built.

An inversion we'd written into our own substrate without noticing, and what changed when our founder named it.

Every essay we have published, newest first, on Paragraph.