AI Debt #
Coined here
Accumulated framework overhead that starts serving itself instead of shipping the product.
Locked decision logs, sprawling architecture documents, scaffolding that the AI itself has to navigate before doing any useful work. Distinct from technical debt, which lives in the code shape. AI Debt is the prose, scaffolding, and meta-process around the code that the next agent has to absorb before doing anything useful. Compounds in proportion to how heavily AI is producing the artifacts.
Appears in AI Debt
Boutique Gravity #
Coined here
The pull that quality work exerts on adjacent work, raising the bar until "done" becomes harder to declare.
Each improvement raises the bar for everything else. A high-quality feature makes adjacent features look unfinished by contrast; polishing one surface highlights every unpolished surface around it. Companion concept to economic gravity (the pressure to ship cheaply). Boutique gravity pulls the opposite direction. The mechanism behind shipping paralysis in projects with high taste and unbounded scope.
Appears in Shipping Paralysis & World Domination Scope
Cambrian Era #
Vocabulary of trade · VC metaphor
Established metaphor for technology category explosions and the early-form era preceding them.
Not coined here. Pre-Cambrian = the legacy era (open niches, no winners yet, most product forms unbuilt). Cambrian = the explosion (early body plans appearing, dominant winners not yet selected). Used here to describe the current state of dev-tool categories. Most are Pre-Cambrian; the Cambrian explosion of agent-shaped tooling is just beginning.
Appears in Humans Moving Upchain
Dark Factory #
Established term, applied here
An autonomous factory that operates without human attendance, applied here to the AI build/review/merge cycle running without humans in the implementation path.
Originates in industrial-era manufacturing (lights-out factories that run unattended). Widely used in the AI context for agent systems that ship work end-to-end without human intervention. Not coined here. Applied as the concrete metaphor for the L5 endpoint: a substrate-driven build/review/merge pipeline that runs the cycle on its own.
Appears in The Dark Factory
Five Levels of AI Programming #
Authored by Dan Shapiro
A framework describing the autonomy spectrum of AI-assisted programming, from L0 (manual coding) through L5 (full automation within a given spec).
Dan Shapiro's framework. L0 = manual coding. L1-L3 = increasing AI assistance. L4 = spec → software (one-shot agent execution under human supervision). L5 = full automation within a given spec (the dark factory: substrate ships its own work end-to-end repeatably). The framework as Shapiro authored it ends at L5; Level 6 is an extension introduced here.
Discussed in Five Levels of AI Programming and The Dark Factory
Level 6 #
Articulation introduced here · extends Shapiro's L0-L5
Intent → software. The autonomy ceiling where the runtime authors its own spec from observed friction.
Beyond Dan Shapiro's L0-L5 framework. The term "Level 6" has surfaced in other discussions of AI-programming autonomy and isn't unique to here; what's introduced in these field notes is the specific articulation: intent → software, with the runtime authoring its own spec from observed friction. At L5 the human still writes the spec; at L6 the runtime observes its own friction, drafts the doctrine update, applies it, and validates against subsequent dispatches without the human writing the spec. Humans operate on intent ("salvage rate is too high") and high-risk review only. The runtime layer learns; the model executes; the human becomes policy-maker rather than spec-author. The cycle has been proven to close: doctrine updates drive correct behavior in the next dispatch (validated when a freshly-spawned agent honored a new doctrine amendment within seconds of authoring). The remaining engineering is removing the human from the observation and drafting steps; the validity of the loop itself is established.
Discussed across Field Notes; framework foundation in Five Levels of AI Programming
Shipping Paralysis #
Coined here
When AI making code free didn't make shipping easier; it shifted the bottleneck to surfaces AI can't help with.
When the cost of writing code drops to near-zero, the constraints that used to be "writing code is hard, ship something simpler" disappear. What replaces them: scope expanding to fill available capacity (World Domination Scope), the quality bar rising past what the project can actually clear (Boutique Gravity), and the project becoming permanently local. The AI-era version of feature creep, with sharper teeth.
Appears in Shipping Paralysis & World Domination Scope
Upchain #
Coined here
The direction humans relocate as agents move into the implementation slot below them.
A vector, not a position. As AI capabilities take over the work humans previously did (writing code, debugging, reviewing), the humans don't disappear. They move up the chain to architecture, intent, judgment, and review. The substrate-level shift the entire AI moment is producing in every dev-tool category. Coined in public response to the question of what to call the AI era of software-building.
Appears in Humans Moving Upchain
World Domination Scope #
Coined here
The failure mode where a project's scope expands faster than its shipping cadence.
Genuinely good projects stay permanently local because every new capability makes the project harder to ship at all. Each addition pulls more surfaces into the "must be perfect before launch" frame, which extends scope, which pulls in more surfaces. Closely related to shipping paralysis and boutique gravity; names the specific failure shape where ambition outruns delivery.
Appears in Shipping Paralysis & World Domination Scope
