habitatHabitat¶
Habitat, the underlying system, isn't AI. It flips AI's focus on optimal guesswork to where, how and what changed. Habitat observes.
Only positions travel, never words¶
Habitat turns words into positions. It reads a text clause by clause and finds who does what, and what is said about it. Each of these is an act, and each act gets a position: a list of numbers, made by fixed rules about how the sentence is built and by a fixed language model that turns words into numbers the same way every time. A position says where an act sits, not whether it is true, kind or good.
From then on, what travels is the position:
- into your reading: the positions of every paragraph you read, in the order you read them;
- into a gem: the positions of the paragraphs you choose, and their totals;
- into a room's Gem-Space: the gems its members give, added up;
- into a digest: a 64-character fingerprint computed from positions;
- into a receipt: the answer to one question about a record, with its limit.
Your words stay with you, in your browser and in the files you choose to save.
A gem is the shape of your reading, given without a word of it: the positions of the paragraphs you chose, each act by its id, and their totals. It is signed by your browser's key, so anyone can check which key gave it and that it hasn't changed since. You give it as a file to hand to someone or, as a member in a room, to the room's Gem-Space, where it adds to the room's total. It is drawn as rings from its own numbers, and whoever opens it with Review a gem sees that shape, never your words.
The exceptions, stated plainly. To be placed, a paragraph goes to our server, and so do the words you type into a text's search box; both are answered and not kept. A remark you post in a room carries where it was made and a fingerprint of those words, never the words. When you invite someone to your room, your paragraphs go with the invitation, by your act, and are served only to the members who join. What is kept, and where lists everything.
What it reads, and what it keeps¶
Texts clause by clause; tables row by row, each row placed by its own values. The record keeps the order things arrived in: which sentence came first, which revision followed which. Some readings use that order. The digest does not, which is why re-sorting a table leaves it unchanged.
What it never does¶
It doesn't write a line, interpret, rank anyone or decide. Habitat is a natural language processor that never interprets. What a result means is yours to make.
Go deeper: The method, line by line · How it works, in four moves · Words we use · The Commons