About
How these are published
The documents 4th Culture publishes for other people to use, and the rules they are published under: a version keeps its address, the licence is stated, corrections are on the record, and each document says what it owes to generative AI.
What is published here
Three kinds of document. A framework is a scheme written for other people to adopt, with a specification and a machine-readable copy; the first is AI Use Levels. A proposal is the public version of work written for one client, with the private parts removed and a note saying what kind of thing was removed. A paper is an argument or a finding written to be read on its own.
Versions, corrections and what never changes
Every document has a version number, and every version has its own address, which never changes. A version is published once and is not rewritten. A change of substance is a new version, and the earlier one stays where it was with a notice naming the version that superseded it. A revision that leaves the substance alone, a typo or a broken link, is made in place and dated on the page with a note of what changed. A framework’s Versions list also names the revision of its text, such as text 1.1.4: the third number changes when the text is revised in place, and the version number and its address do not.
The address without a version number serves the latest version and lists every version with its date.
Licence and attribution
Unless a document says otherwise, it is published under CC BY 4.0: copy it, share it or adapt it, with a link to the document’s page as attribution. A document under another licence says so on its page and says why.
Corrections and discussion
A framework names the repository it comes from. An error, a question or a proposed change goes there as an issue, where the discussion is public and stays with the document; a typo can be a pull request. For a proposal or a paper, write to the studio through 4thcltr.com. A correction that follows is recorded on the page, never made silently.
Machine-readable forms
Every version has a PDF, printed from its page. A framework also has a spec.json beside each version, the framework as data for a parser or a validator, and the latest one at the address without a version number. For the site as a whole: a sitemap, an Atom feed with one entry per version, and an llms.txt that lists every document, version and file for a language model to read.
The AI-use tag on each document
Every document says what it owes to generative AI with the scheme published here, AI Use Levels: four words in a fixed order for whether the tool could act on its own, how much of the result is its output, whether what it did could be undone, and what the tool was. The tag stands at the foot of each page in the human form and in the page’s metadata in the machine form.
This site’s standing tag, dated as the scheme asks: L2 · made · undo · Claude Fable 5.1, since October 2026. The pages and their code are substantially a model’s output; each change waited for a person’s yes, and all of it could be put back.
Who writes them
Michael Duncan McArthur of 4th Culture, a design practice in Toronto. The studio and its work are at 4thcltr.com; the person and the record are at gorfed.net.