Artistic Research / Public Slice

Public Slice — 2026-08-07

Four fixed repository states are assembled here into a bounded reading of public form, permission, preservation and formal authority. The evidence establishes each state at a fixed commit; the synthesis is an authored reading of them.

Slice date7 August 2026

Evidence states30 June–27 July 2026, UTC+8

Indexingnoindex / bounded reading

At this commit, a Public Anchor has a defined scaffold and schema

A Public Anchor scaffold and schema are introduced: a named, citable, source-visible record that declares its own scope and non-scope.

Boundary as form

May provide

public name and classification status
minimal formulation and related terms
citation and source-navigation placement

Must not stand for

the full model or complete protocol
the full internal registry or working corpus
a replacement for source-level reading

The line is not decoration: this reading treats the declared boundary itself as part of the public object.

553b341b0b28PUBLIC_ANCHOR_SCHEMA.mdSOURCE_BOUNDARY_STATEMENT.mdCITATION.cff

Observed state: At this commit a Public Anchor scaffold and schema are present, and they declare scope and non-scope explicitly. For public anchors, visibility alone is not treated as sufficient.
Research reading: The shift is not that publicness as a whole becomes defined, but that the conditions for one kind of public object are formalized.
Limit: This commit establishes a scaffold and schema. It does not demonstrate a complete population of mature anchor instances or define the whole public surface.

Repository evidence

Commit: 553b341b0b2840633b5ea33410bec0527679d58d — browse public-anchors/ at this commit

Files: PUBLIC_ANCHOR_SCHEMA.md, SOURCE_BOUNDARY_STATEMENT.md, CITATION.cff

Public visibility does not equal full release; citation availability does not equal source completeness.

At this commit, the generated view is documented as a historical artifact

The tracked 30-record authority-map artifact is made verify-only. Later tooling may check its pinned identity; regeneration in place is outside the documented operations.

Archival operation

generatorgeneration capability

30-record artifacthistorical / pinned

verificationread / compare / write nothing

Verification is the only documented operation on this historical artifact.

records 30 bytes 92903
sha256 3b1e5993a52cbce340b85472fea1ae5ea6f921cf8f7751d2d635edc7b17216ea
mode verify-only write nothing

77f97de5061230 recordsverify-onlywrites nothing

Observed state: At this commit the tracked visualization is declared verify-only: its identity values are pinned, and the documented operations read and compare it but write nothing.
Research reading: Preservation is expressed as a permission boundary: future tooling retains the right to verify this past state, but not the right to rewrite it.
Limit: This establishes historical isolation for this artifact and these repository operations. It is not, by itself, a general archival policy for all MWE material.

Repository evidence

Commit: 77f97de50612360de48b78b6364f29ef74499900 — browse public-surface-authority-map/ at this commit

File: public-surface-authority-map/README.md

A later visualization state is documented beside the frozen one

A 59-record adjacency dataset is documented as a separate visualization product. It does not replace, supersede, correct or deprecate the frozen 30-node product.

Temporal coexistence

Frozen authority-map artifact

historical / pinned / independently verifiable

stands beside
not over

Expanded adjacency dataset

separate product / later selection / prepared data

At this commit the 59-record product is prepared data only; no page publication has occurred.

The page leaves both states visible at once because coexistence, rather than replacement, is the material under examination.

39c7f8b37ba530 frozen59 separate productdoes not supersede

Observed state: At this commit a 59-record visualization product is documented beside the frozen 30-node product rather than as its replacement.
Research reading: Within this visualization lineage, a later visualization state can be added without retroactively erasing the earlier artifact.
Limit: Coexistence is established for these two products. The later product is prepared data at this commit, and this does not establish a rule that every future representation must be preserved.

Repository evidence

Commit: 39c7f8b37ba5a63716fcf71b721a4270982a1d6a — browse public-surface-adjacency-map/ at this commit

File: public-surface-adjacency-map/README.md

Registry selection and visualization membership remain separate contracts; visual position and membership do not imply formal classification or authority.

At this commit, the interface's form is not assigned formal authority

The expanded public surface is presented as a deterministic radial interface with authored record order, keyboard navigation, grouping arcs and routed edges. Rendering constraints limit what geometry, ordering and colour are permitted to formally encode.

Page-local schematic / not repository evidence

formal authority ceiling

The rendering constraints bound what the interface formally encodes; they do not establish how viewers will perceive hierarchy or authority.

8261b7c505a1deterministic layoutauthored orderformal encoding constrained

Observed state: At this commit the prepared relation data is rendered as a spatially navigable radial interface with deterministic layout, authored DOM order, grouping arcs, edge routing and keyboard movement.
Research reading: Visual form becomes part of the research problem: the implementation constrains what the interface may formally encode without claiming control over how viewers perceive hierarchy or authority.
Limit: The implementation does not confirm relations, establish ontology or assign conceptual priority. These safeguards constrain formal encoding, not perception. Responsive legibility and spatial navigation remain properties of the encounter rather than proofs of semantic neutrality.

Repository evidence

Commit: 8261b7c505a17bd907a5c8dbcd30ea2b07115f46

Files: src/components/PublicSurfaceAdjacencyMap.astro, src/lib/public-surface-adjacency-map/layout.ts

This state is in the website repository rather than the source repository, so the commit and paths are given for location rather than as source links.

Selected reading

What is a public form permitted to do — and what must it not claim?

The four states can be read together through a shared constraint: how can a changing system make bounded parts of itself encounterable without allowing each new public form to stand in for the whole?

Across the four repository states examined here:

Anchormay become findable, but not stand for the whole.

Freezemay remain verifiable, while the documented tooling is not permitted to rewrite it.

Accumulatemay be joined by a later state, but not automatically superseded.

Recomposemay reorganize the arrangement of the presented material, but not thereby acquire formal semantic authority.

Reading shorthand:public form × permission × authority ceiling

This synthesis is a reading across four specific repository states. Chronological order does not establish causation, and one demonstrated instance does not automatically become a system-wide principle.