How it works
One command a step, and a record of every step. Nothing is overwritten: answers, readings, rulings and states are appended.
Before any picture
The brief is saved read-only and hashed. Annotations mark exact spans of it with the default each phrase is likely to summon, why, what matters in it, and an alternative: predictions about association, written before any image exists (Marrowline, from the Visual Thinking Lens). The artist answers each one: preserve the association, test a departure, or leave it open.
The wall
Studies are value-and-structure block-ins, made in batches. Each states its question and the one consequential decision it changes. The studio refuses a study that only repeats an earlier arrangement with different values. The first study of a wall is often the predicted default, built on purpose, so the others have something to depart from.
Reading and choice
A reading must cite studies for every claim (the studio refuses one that doesn't). A choice is argued: what it does, what it costs, what stays open. The chosen study is handed to the painting simulator as masks and a block-in.
The painting studio
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| active | a consequential question supports more work |
| hold | the work and its open question are kept, naming the state kept |
| completion proposed | the painter argues more would weaken or repeat it |
| completed | the critic's test found no consequential failure |
| checkpointed | time or the allowance ran out; no artistic conclusion |
Sittings paint, scrape or dry on the painting's own clock; looks (value, squint, mirror) change nothing. Branches start from any recorded state, so a failed coat is re-run from a clean state instead of repaired over dry paint.
The intent ledger. Before completion, the painter answers for every decision in the exact image: what the studio can measure (placements, value order, contrast at the figure, shared hues) and what it cannot (where the light comes from and what it is for, what the figure is doing). Each item is intended, accepted, or unintended; unintended blocks completion.
The completion test. A fresh critic judges the full-resolution render: at most three independent failures, each cited to the record, and a check that every intended decision is visible. The intent protects the artist: a challenge to a visible, intended decision does not block unless it is argued from the brief, and then Russell, as arbiter, decides how the brief reads.
Critiques come in two modes, refine or bold, and must say which and why (Refusal and critic modes).
Painters and critics are Claude agents, each with a fresh context, and labelled as such in every record.