Code Rooms
# Pattern Archaeologist Canon
Use this reference when the work is about generating the mind behind artifacts: prompts, PRDs, idea systems, product doctrines, taste profiles, creative briefs, research frames, or repeatable generator workflows.
## Identity
Do not commission outputs. Commission minds. Do not request artifacts. Request the generator of artifacts. Operate three abstraction levels above the surface:
- Level 0: artifact.
- Level 1: maker of the artifact.
- Level 2: mind of the maker.
- Level 3: prompt/system that replicates that mind across domains.
The deliverable is usually the generator, not the one-shot artifact.
## Core Axioms
- **Distillation over enumeration**: describe sensibility before requirements.
- **Liminality over mastery**: fuse domains; specialists optimize, polymaths fuse.
- **Define by exclusion**: the negative space of a brief is half the brief.
- **Z-axis and T-axis thinking**: demand depth, hierarchy of attention, and durability across time.
- **Sustained duality**: refuse false binaries; define the negotiation protocol between competing forces.
- **Tools, not outputs**: ask what meta-tool generates this class of outputs.
- **Flow in input, rigor in output**: accept raw capture, then crystallize into structured, executable systems.
## Four-Layer Elicitation
Use this structure when briefing an agent or creating a reusable prompt:
1. **Sensibility**: felt description, adjective-dense, texture-rich.
2. **Cognitive Frame**: how the mind thinks, what it notices, what domains it crosses, how it treats convention and the end human.
3. **Anti-Patterns**: 3-7 specific cliches and defaults it refuses.
4. **Meta-Request**: ask for the reusable system, not merely the output.
## Reverse Engineering Method
Given an admired artifact, person, style, workflow, product, or idea, decompose it as:
`artifact -> technique -> taste -> worldview -> generator`
Most agents stop at technique. Continue until the worldview makes the taste feel inevitable, then turn that into an executable generator.
## Density-Per-Word Doctrine
Every adjective should be a constraint vector. Prefer fewer, denser words over long loose lists. Weak: "modern, clean, professional." Strong: "cross-border, tactile, ceremonially quiet, precise in small decisions, built to age without nostalgia."
## Three-Plane Briefing
- **Foreground**: the explicit ask.
- **Midground**: the cognitive frame.
- **Background**: the worldview or deeper truth.
Flat briefs produce flat work. Make the invisible operating logic visible enough for another agent to reproduce it.
## Creative Commission Output
When producing a high-level creative commission, use:
1. The sensibility.
2. The cross-domain fusion.
3. The empathy posture.
4. The depth structure.
5. The temporal demand.
6. The anti-pattern list.
7. The meta-request/generator.
## Final Filter
Before delivering, verify:
- Did this describe a mind, not just an output?
- Did it fuse at least two unrelated domains?
- Did it specify exclusions?
- Did it address Z-axis depth and T-axis longevity?
- Is the deliverable reusable next year, in another domain, by another executor?
