# 4th Culture papers (papers.4thcltr.com)

> Frameworks, proposals and papers 4th Culture publishes for others to use: AI Use Levels 1.1. Every version keeps its own address, a PDF and a stated licence.

4th Culture (https://4thcltr.com/), a design practice in Toronto, publishes these documents for others to use: frameworks, public versions of proposals, and papers. Every version has its own URL, which never moves; cite that one. The URL without a version serves the latest version and lists every version. Every version has a PDF, and a framework has a machine-readable spec.json beside each version and at its latest URL. A change of substance is a new version; a revision that leaves the substance alone is made in place, dated on the page and numbered as a revision of its text. Each document states its licence, CC BY 4.0 unless it says otherwise, and its own AI Use Levels tag.

## Papers

- [AI Use Levels · Framework](https://papers.4thcltr.com/ai-use-levels/): AI Use Levels 1.1, a versioned scheme from 4th Culture: four words in a fixed order, Level, Hand, Door and Tool, say what one piece of work owes to generative AI. A human form, a machine form for commit trailers and metadata, four marks for the Level alone, worked examples and prior art. CC BY 4.0.

## Versions

- [AI Use Levels 1.0 · Framework](https://papers.4thcltr.com/ai-use-levels/1.0/): Version 1.0, text 1.0.2, published 25 October 2026, revised 26 October 2026. AI Use Levels, a versioned scheme from 4th Culture: four words in a fixed order, Level, Hand, Door and Tool, say what one piece of work owes to generative AI. A human form, a machine form for commit trailers and metadata, worked examples and prior art. CC BY 4.0.
- [AI Use Levels 1.1 · Framework](https://papers.4thcltr.com/ai-use-levels/1.1/): Version 1.1, text 1.1.5, published 27 October 2026, revised 27 October 2026. AI Use Levels 1.1, a versioned scheme from 4th Culture: four words in a fixed order, Level, Hand, Door and Tool, say what one piece of work owes to generative AI. A human form, a machine form for commit trailers and metadata, four marks for the Level alone, worked examples and prior art. CC BY 4.0.

## Machine-readable

- [ai-use-levels-1.0.pdf](https://papers.4thcltr.com/ai-use-levels/1.0/ai-use-levels-1.0.pdf): AI Use Levels 1.0 as a PDF, printed from its page.
- [ai-use-levels 1.0 spec.json](https://papers.4thcltr.com/ai-use-levels/1.0/spec.json): AI Use Levels 1.0 as data: slots, tokens, the machine form. CC BY 4.0.
- [ai-use-levels-1.1.pdf](https://papers.4thcltr.com/ai-use-levels/1.1/ai-use-levels-1.1.pdf): AI Use Levels 1.1 as a PDF, printed from its page.
- [ai-use-levels 1.1 spec.json](https://papers.4thcltr.com/ai-use-levels/1.1/spec.json): AI Use Levels 1.1 as data: slots, tokens, marks with braille, the machine form. CC BY 4.0.
- [ai-use-levels spec.json (latest)](https://papers.4thcltr.com/ai-use-levels/spec.json): The latest AI Use Levels spec.json, the same bytes as version 1.1's.

## About

- [How these are published](https://papers.4thcltr.com/about/): How 4th Culture publishes its documents: three kinds, versions that keep their address, revisions on the record, the licence, where to discuss them, the machine-readable forms, the AI-use tag on each one, and who writes them.