Guides

A shorter first-pass guide to the site: the core claim, the main patterns to watch for, and where to go next if you want examples, tools, or the longer reference material.

A recognition-first guide for spotting the archive’s core pattern in work, healthcare, relationships, and bureaucracy before diving into the broader framework, with a symptom-first switchboard for choosing where to go next.

A short evergreen guide to the archive’s core diagnostic questions for reading institutions, platforms, policies, and procedures.

A short field guide for testing whether a visible option is genuinely usable or only formally available.

A domain-specific application guide for using the framework in healthcare: spotting burden transfer, delay, proof demands, and care theater in clinical and administrative settings.

A domain-specific guide for applying the framework to work and organizational life: hidden maintenance, coercive flexibility, and institutional smoothness purchased by worker absorption.

A domain-specific guide for applying the framework to AI systems: ambient governance, hidden politics in technical defaults, and the costs pushed onto users and downstream workers.

A domain-specific guide for applying the framework to education: institutional sorting, managed inclusion, and the burdens students and teachers absorb to keep schools legible.

A domain-specific guide for disability and mental health: where refusal, withdrawal, and uneven access get misdescribed as individual dysfunction.

A domain-specific guide for product/UX: testing usable recourse under stress instead of counting feature presence.

A domain-specific guide for law/admin process: rights on paper versus rights in use.

A domain-specific guide for social services and public administration: attrition as governance.

A domain-specific guide for democratic participation: formal openness versus operative responsiveness.

A domain-specific guide for journalism/research/commentary: preventing misdescription through better category discipline.

A domain-specific guide for AI governance: symbolic oversight versus enforceable recourse architecture.

A secondary reference page for readers who already started with /start-here and want the canonical diagram set plus the five framework tests in one place.

How sociotechnical systems distribute burden, absorb failure, and convert human adaptability into infrastructure. The central question: whether institutions remain inhabitable for the kinds of creatures we are.

A synthesis guide that maps the archive’s main claim, recurring mechanisms, representative essays, and what changes when the pieces are read together.

A standalone essay stating the archive's full theory of legitimacy, livability, burden transfer, non-use, required selves, and usable recourse.

A synthesis guide explaining how the archive models coercion across healthcare, work, bureaucracy, technology, and relationships.

A synthesis guide showing how the archive’s healthcare essays connect through livability, proof, delay, care theater, and burden transfer.

Domain-specific field pages for diagnosing misdescription and designing usable recourse across institutions.