How to read the Library
Claim
Every book here is the same six slots in the same order, and the last of them names the file behind each claim.
Construction
There are two nunascape sites and this is the second one. nunascape.com is the surface: pastel, light, welcoming, built to show the shape to someone who has never seen it. library.nunascape.com is the floor beneath it — black, quiet, technical — and it carries the derivations, the datasets, the models, and the things that were tried and replaced. They are separate sites on purpose, and nothing is shared between them automatically. The one link back out is the prismatic tile in the masthead, which is the only colourful thing in the room.
Library Home is a plain numbered index: seven sections, each opening to reveal its entries, numbered section.entry — 2.1, 2.9, 5.14. No marks and no letter codes appear there. That is deliberate, and book 02 explains what sits underneath it.
The six slots
Every book page carries the same anatomy, set out in the handoff brief and unchanged since: Claim, one sentence stated flatly. Construction, how the thing is built, with a figure. Proof, the argument or the computation. Note. Open questions, what is not settled. Checks, what was verified, how, and against what.
The Note slot is Aaron's, and it is the one slot nothing else may fill. The handoff brief puts it in capitals: never write the personal sections in his voice. Where a Note is still a prompt rather than a note, that is what it is — scaffolding, waiting.
What that buys a reader
You can enter anywhere. The shelf that became Core Claims was written to be read straight through or entered at any single claim, and the one-fact-per-page rule is what makes that work. Nothing on a page depends on having read the page before it.
The Checks slot is the contract. The working rule the project runs on is that a number without a check behind it is a guess. So every claim here is supposed to name the file it came from, and where a figure has been recomputed rather than quoted, the Checks table says so. A page that cannot cite something says that instead.
Cite a book by its slug, not its number. Entry numbers count from 1 within each section, in the order the books are listed in the source, so inserting a book renumbers everything after it. The mark is the stable identifier and the slug is the stable URL.
Status is on the face of it. Thirteen values are in use, from Compiled and Verified through Draft and Contested to Open. Three read as live, the unstarted ones are dimmed, and the rest are plain. If something is a draft it says so; if two sources disagree, the entry says Contested rather than picking one.
It has to work plainly. The theme switch, the open and closed sections and the lit tab are all CSS: no JavaScript is needed to read anything. The same pages are meant to hold up on a phone and in print.
Note
Aaron's slot.
Open questions
- Whether the index should open expanded or collapsed. It currently opens with Core Claims only, and the filing system carries that as an unmade ruling.
- Whether held-open slots — the entries with nothing filed yet — stay visible on the index. They are visible today, dimmed.
- Whether book pages light a tab or carry a breadcrumb. The handoff brief flags this as cheap to decide early and expensive after fifty pages. The pages as built carry a breadcrumb, so it has been settled in practice but not on the record.
- Whether this page belongs in the Introduction at all, or whether its second half is really a contributor's note rather than a reader's.
Checks
| What | How | Source |
|---|---|---|
| The two sites, and why they are separate | Stated in both the style brief and the handoff brief: the surface stays on Squarespace, the Library is its own origin, nothing is shared automatically | library-style-brief.md; START-HERE.md |
| The six slots, and their order | Listed as the page template: claim, construction, proof, note, open questions, checks | START-HERE.md |
| The Note slot stays empty | “Never write the personal sections in his voice” — the brief's own emphasis | START-HERE.md |
| Seven sections, entries numbered section.entry | The display layer, described in full | library-filing-system.md |
| Entry numbers are positional, marks and slugs are stable | Stated under numbering: inserting a book renumbers the ones after it | library-filing-system.md |
| Thirteen status values | Tabulated with their index treatment and counts | library-filing-system.md |
| Read straight through, or entered at any single claim | The standfirst carried on the shelf itself | _src/books.py |
| No JavaScript is needed to read a page | Stated as a rule in the style brief and in the handoff brief's page rules | library-style-brief.md; START-HERE.md |
| A number without a check behind it is a guess | The project's stated working rule | nuna-seed-brief.md |
| The index opens with Core Claims only | Carried as an open ruling, and visible in the generator | library-filing-system.md; _src/gen_index.py |