# Project and Library directory

[Agent welcome](https://experimentsin.ai/sitemap.html#for-agents) · [Compact Markdown guide](https://experimentsin.ai/llms.txt)

Lawrence Rowland explores project work through small scenarios, executable models, diagrams and source-backed explanations. This guide helps people and agents find their way through the published collection.

Each project keeps its own question, scope and account of what its examples establish. An essay here is a trial; a useful result may be a limitation or a failed attempt. Scenarios help people think; future enquiries may change their setting or method. This guide describes the collection and leaves research direction with each project.

## Two home entrances

- [Experiments](https://experimentsin.ai/experiments.html): An entrance to Experiments, Scenarios and Working views: three ways into the same exploratory work.
- [Library](https://experimentsin.ai/library.html): Reusable methods, bounded worked examples and earlier material, organised by subject.

### Within Experiments

- [Experiments](https://experimentsin.ai/side-projects.html): Open enquiries and exploratory collections, each with its own question and scope.
- [Scenarios](https://experimentsin.ai/project-scenarios.html): Familiar situations, each linking to the enquiries that use it. A scenario can support more than one method.
- [Working views](https://experimentsin.ai/explore-visually.html): The nets, maps, matrices and screens used inside the examples.

Four persistent navigation shortcuts remain available: Experiments opens this landing page; Library, Scenarios and Working views open their respective collections.

The question, scenario, approach and concept labels below follow the public catalogue. The short boundary notes are editorial orientation; the linked project owns its fuller scope. SMC means symmetric monoidal category; WBS means work breakdown structure. Each example explains how, and how far, it uses its named methods.

## Gimmer: processes to plans

- Question: Which plans are allowed by the way the work actually happens?
- Scenario: Build a small refuge halfway up a cliff.
- Approach: Lawrence’s main Petri → SMC → WBS collection: related models, generators and explanations, including earlier experiments.
- Concepts: processes, WBS, schedule.
- Scope and limits: Several process-to-plan constructions share this collection. Their assumptions and coverage differ; read the chosen construction's method and checks.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/gimmer-crag/petri-smc-wbs.html) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/gimmer-crag)

## Integrated risks & tasks

- Question: Can tasks and threats be understood through one process model?
- Scenario: Pour the foundations before the cows take the lane.
- Approach: Cows, concrete and shared access: compare original sketches, corrected wiring, process sets and alternative executions of a small resource model.
- Concepts: processes, risk, composition, category theory.
- Scope and limits: Toy resource rules, not a probability forecast or a real schedule.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/integrated_risks_tasks/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/integrated_risks_tasks)

## Project Co-design

- Question: Can a feasible finished system be delivered through acceptable stages?
- Scenario: Reconnect two habitats across a busy road.
- Approach: Four wildlife-crossing essais: compose a complete crossing, construct a delivery path, compare programmes and size remote monitoring power.
- Concepts: co design, trade offs, staging, category theory.
- Scope and limits: Synthetic capacities and costs; the model does not predict animal use.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/project-co-design/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/lawrencerowland.github.io/tree/master/project-co-design)

## Bricklaying a Rotunda

- Question: How can we explore changing project states?
- Scenario: Build a circular brick wall, course by course.
- Approach: A collection of experiments around project dynamics, lenses and trajectories.
- Concepts: dynamics, models, category theory.
- Scope and limits: An exploratory collection of dynamics, lenses and trajectories; the chosen model's assumptions define what its paths mean.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/bricklaying-a-rotunda/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/bricklaying-a-rotunda)

## Local to Global

- Question: When do local project views fit together?
- Scenario: Fit a control centre onto the Tangled Triangle.
- Approach: Two lines of enquiry: early Tangled Triangle sketches ask how AI interprets interfaces, topology and system architecture; later experiments test local-to-global consistency.
- Concepts: consistency, WBS, category theory.
- Scope and limits: Early AI interpretations and later consistency checks are distinct lines of enquiry. A local-to-global result is tied to its stated model.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/local-to-global/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/local-to-global)

## Shared waters: open systems

- Question: What do open-system methods help us understand about useful project chunks?
- Scenario: Connect an offshore depot, a power barge and their organisations.
- Approach: Three corrected first attempts from the original GraphML sketches: boundary composition, organisational comparison, and explicit shared observations and capacity.
- Concepts: open systems, composition, dynamics, category theory.
- Scope and limits: First constructions of boundaries, organisations and shared observations; their computed results concern the supplied examples.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/shared-dynamics/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/shared-dynamics)

## Programme Decision Sequences

- Question: How should a programme act as uncertainty unfolds?
- Scenario: Choose now; learn more before the next decision.
- Approach: Models, worksheets, worked paths and IT decision games for acting under uncertainty. The experiments catalogue distinguishes live simulations, tutorials and historical reports.
- Concepts: decisions, uncertainty, programmes.
- Scope and limits: The collection distinguishes simulations, tutorials and historical reports. For example, its finite evidence model uses invented payoffs rather than forecasts.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/Programme-decision-sequences/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/Programme-decision-sequences)

## Gimmer: higher-autonomy experiments

- Question: Can work packages share resources without hiding valid ways to build?
- Scenario: The same refuge, with the awkward handovers left in.
- Approach: A parallel Petri → SMC → WBS investigation. Agents choose bounded next steps and repeat build, test and review loops as compute permits.
- Concepts: processes, WBS, higher autonomy.
- Scope and limits: Exactness depends on the declared finite object and completed search. Illustrative durations are not verified construction methods.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/gimmer-crag-project-mountain-refuge/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/gimmer-crag-project-mountain-refuge) · [Public scope and method boundaries](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/gimmer-crag-project-mountain-refuge/README.md)

## Project Spines

- Question: What can schedule structure reveal beyond dates?
- Scenario: Build a mountain-refuge shed, one dependency at a time.
- Approach: Six tabs on schedule spines, antichain slices, finite shed construction, review loops, vacillation boundaries and project-controls interpretation.
- Concepts: schedule, project controls, posets, antichains.
- Scope and limits: Precedence structure and partition results do not by themselves establish a resource-feasible schedule.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/project-spines/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/project-spines)

## Functors for Projects

- Question: How might mathematical structures illuminate project work?
- Scenario: Describe one project in more than one useful way.
- Approach: Browse experiments in functors, adjoints, sheaves, wiring diagrams and finite colimits, including the grounded-theory coding illustration.
- Concepts: category theory, models, project management.
- Scope and limits: An exploratory collection, not one bounded foray or a complete project-management system. Each construction has its own mathematical and practical limits.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/functors-for_projects/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/functors-for_projects) · [Collection purpose and limits (3 October 2026 copy)](https://experimentsin.ai/library/sources/functors/readme.html)

## Building a Wall

- Question: Can explicit interfaces turn project work into reusable blocks?
- Scenario: Build a wall that is ready to receive a roof.
- Approach: Project wiring diagrams, beginning with a construction essay on readiness, reusable modules and computed checks, alongside eight earlier explorations.
- Concepts: wiring diagrams, composition, readiness, category theory.
- Scope and limits: Readiness and interface checks concern the declared construction; they are not evidence of a completed real build.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/building_a_wall/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/building_a_wall)

## Gimmer: broader collection

- Question: What else must we understand beyond a task list and dates?
- Scenario: Deliver the refuge—and keep its different accounts connected.
- Approach: Observation, binding, procurement, ontology and change experiments outside the Petri → SMC → WBS collection and higher-autonomy work.
- Concepts: observation, procurement, ontology, change.
- Scope and limits: A collection of different project questions, not one uniform planning model. Read the scope of the selected essay or app.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/gimmer-crag/app-index.html) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/gimmer-crag)

## Solway Tunnel Ontology

- Question: How can a project ontology connect to a plan?
- Scenario: Imagine delivering a tunnel beneath the Solway.
- Approach: Ontology and WBS experiments using a tunnel scenario, with a separate knowledge-graph audit.
- Concepts: ontology, WBS, knowledge graphs.
- Scope and limits: An ontology, a WBS and a knowledge-graph audit answer different questions; none alone establishes tunnel feasibility.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/Solway_tunnel_ontology/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/Solway_tunnel_ontology)

## Portfolio Wave reading map

- Question: How do sources, themes and projects connect?
- Scenario: Follow a reading idea into a project experiment.
- Approach: Explore the public source–project–topic projection through the Portfolio Wave view of the concepts graph.
- Concepts: knowledge graphs, sources, projects.
- Scope and limits: A public source–project–topic projection. A link suggests a reading connection, not proof that the source establishes a project's claims.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/Tag_Concurrence_Graph/pw_best.html) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/Tag_Concurrence_Graph)

## Tag Concurrence Graph

- Question: Which concepts occur together in reading and app collections?
- Scenario: Find connections in a shelf of tagged reading.
- Approach: Concepts-graph views for reading collections and a dated React app-catalogue tag map, with explicit source and refresh information.
- Concepts: knowledge graphs, sources.
- Scope and limits: Co-occurrence maps describe the indexed collection and its refresh state; an association is not a causal or semantic proof.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/Tag_Concurrence_Graph/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/Tag_Concurrence_Graph)

## Knowing enough to act together

- Question: What must each crew know to choose its part of the move?
- Scenario: Move an oversized whale exhibit through a museum.
- Approach: Compare route cues, completion reports and direct inspections. Discover which information arrangements let the handlers choose a passage and the curator decide whether to reopen.
- Concepts: knowledge, coordination, project state.
- Scope and limits: The museum scene is provisional. Finite checks distinguish local choice from physical possibility; they do not settle the wider enquiry or demonstrate human benefit.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/knowing-enough/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/knowing-enough) · [Public End, Ways and Means](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/knowing-enough/FORAY.md)

## Meta Project Innovation

- Question: Could we improve the project before optimising its plan?
- Scenario: Move customer data to the cloud, questioning the inherited scope.
- Approach: Frontier Lab explores five independent lenses on one case. Demand challenge and evidence sensors connect to this foray's original candidates; their combined practical value remains open.
- Concepts: project management, planning, evidence, innovation.
- Scope and limits: Frontier Lab is one early trial of five planning lenses; it does not define the wider foray. Their combined practical value remains open.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/meta-project-innovation/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/lawrencerowland.github.io/tree/master/meta-project-innovation)

## Counterfactual programme steering

- Question: What would change if we chose a different management policy?
- Scenario: A delivery team considers more automation, extra staff or a lower WIP limit.
- Approach: Project Causal Lab pairs a causal-graph explorer with a separate programme-policy model. An early Counterfactuals trial, with the boundary between assumptions, fitted data and causal evidence made explicit.
- Concepts: causality, counterfactuals, decisions, simulation.
- Scope and limits: A causal-graph explorer and a separate policy model. Supplied assumptions, fitted data and causal evidence must remain distinct.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/counterfactuals/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/lawrencerowland.github.io/tree/master/counterfactuals)

## Bracken Vale: useful project interventions

- Question: Which small interventions help project people see and do something useful?
- Scenario: A small railway has renewals to plan, decisions waiting and several accounts of what matters.
- Approach: Practical trials explore project decisions, relationships, measures and evidence-linked drafts in a fictional railway. Inputs and results stay inspectable; practical human benefit remains to be tested.
- Concepts: project management, decisions, evidence, relationships.
- Scope and limits: Fictional project trials with inspectable inputs and results. First-version coverage does not establish adoption or practical human benefit.
- [Open project](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/bracken-vale/) · [GitHub source (may require access)](https://github.com/lawrencerowland/bracken-vale) · [Public End, Ways and Means (3 October 2026 copy)](https://experimentsin.ai/library/sources/bracken-vale/foray.html)

## Scenarios

- [Gimmer refuge](https://experimentsin.ai/project-scenarios/gimmer/): Build a small refuge halfway up a cliff. Enquiries: [Processes to plans](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/gimmer-crag/petri-smc-wbs.html); [Work packages and handovers](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/gimmer-crag-project-mountain-refuge/); [Other accounts of the refuge](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/gimmer-crag/app-index.html); [Schedule structure](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/project-spines/); [Compare nine approaches](https://experimentsin.ai/gimmer-comparison/).
- [The farm track](https://experimentsin.ai/project-scenarios/farm-track/): Deliver concrete while the farm carries on. Enquiries: [Tasks, risks and shared access](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/integrated_risks_tasks/).
- [A wildlife crossing](https://experimentsin.ai/project-scenarios/wildlife-crossing/): Reconnect two habitats across a busy road. Enquiries: [Compose the crossing](https://experimentsin.ai/project-co-design/apps/wildlife-crossing.html); [Construct a delivery path](https://experimentsin.ai/project-co-design/apps/staged-paths.html); [Compare programmes](https://experimentsin.ai/project-co-design/apps/programme-studio.html); [Power the monitoring](https://experimentsin.ai/project-co-design/apps/monitoring-power-loop.html).
- [A brick rotunda](https://experimentsin.ai/project-scenarios/rotunda/): Build a circular wall, course by course. Enquiries: [Choices and histories](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/bricklaying-a-rotunda/apps/Possible-trajectories1.html#first-try); [What must a state remember?](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/bricklaying-a-rotunda/apps/constructive-state/).
- [The Tangled Triangle](https://experimentsin.ai/project-scenarios/tangled-triangle/): Fit a control centre onto an awkward site. Enquiries: [Interpret the site](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/local-to-global/tangled-triangle/); [Test the local rules](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/local-to-global/forays/003-tangled-triangle.html#first-try).
- [Shared waters](https://experimentsin.ai/project-scenarios/shared-waters/): Connect an offshore depot and a power barge. Enquiries: [Join at a boundary](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/shared-dynamics/compose.html); [Compare an organisation](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/shared-dynamics/compare.html); [Make sharing explicit](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/shared-dynamics/interfaces.html).
- [A wall and its roof](https://experimentsin.ai/project-scenarios/wall-and-roof/): Build a wall that is ready for the next trade. Enquiries: [Keep the interfaces honest](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/building_a_wall/apps/wall-roof-wiring-smc/); [One diagram, several meanings](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/building_a_wall/apps/wiring-algebra/); [How a course repeats](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/building_a_wall/apps/course-by-course/).
- [A tunnel beneath the Solway](https://experimentsin.ai/project-scenarios/solway-tunnel/): Find the work hidden behind a finished tunnel. Enquiries: [From an outcome to its work](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/Solway_tunnel_ontology/).
- [Moving the museum whale](https://experimentsin.ai/project-scenarios/museum-whale/): Move a whale exhibit before the gallery reopens. Enquiries: [Knowing enough to act together](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/knowing-enough/).
- [Bracken Vale railway](https://experimentsin.ai/project-scenarios/bracken-vale/): Renew a small railway while services keep running. Enquiries: [Small interventions, useful questions](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/bracken-vale/).
- [The mountain-festival shuttle](https://experimentsin.ai/project-scenarios/mountain-festival-shuttle/): Book the buses before the evidence is in. Enquiries: [Evidence before commitment](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/Programme-decision-sequences/).
- [The Island Reading Room](https://experimentsin.ai/project-scenarios/island-reading-room/): Get the books ashore while the jetty is closed. Enquiries: [Policies in conversation](https://lawrencerowland.github.io/functors-for_projects/apps/geometry-of-interaction/).

## Library subjects and further shelves

Library placement means a reusable or more established example has a home; it does not certify the method. A model check, a working interface, mathematical proof and demonstrated human benefit are different kinds of evidence. Read the selected example's assumptions, source uses and limits.

- [Project states & relationships](https://experimentsin.ai/library/methods/states-and-relationships.html): Connect tasks, states, people and resources. Explore shared project models, process diagrams and the relationships behind a portfolio. (18 entries.)
- [Decisions & trade-offs](https://experimentsin.ai/library/methods/decisions-and-trade-offs.html): Frame a decision, compare competing objectives, and inspect what buffer, delay assumptions and new information change. (14 entries.)
- [Delivery dynamics & feedback](https://experimentsin.ai/library/methods/delivery-dynamics.html): Explore dependency loops, learning, rework, reviews and site occupancy through deliberately small models. (14 entries.)
- [Data, evidence & assurance](https://experimentsin.ai/library/methods/data-and-assurance.html): Match methods to the available information. Examine data maturity, project controls and what earlier prediction experiments could establish. (13 entries.)
- [Capabilities & futures](https://experimentsin.ai/library/methods/capabilities-and-futures.html): Explore the practices, capabilities and tools a portfolio might need, with earlier reading, framework guides and clearly labelled future scenarios. (16 entries.)
- [Custom GPTs](https://experimentsin.ai/gpt-links-page.html): coaches, co-pilots and agents for thinking through project work.
- [Wider interest](https://experimentsin.ai/wider-interest/): Books, journeys, shapes and small games.
- [Sitemap](https://experimentsin.ai/sitemap.html): Follow the branches from the front door.

## Wider interest

- [A little room to move](https://experimentsin.ai/wider-interest/door-moisture-model/): Change the moisture assumptions around an old timber door. Watch a few millimetres of clearance disappear.
- [Project Management Pong](https://experimentsin.ai/wider-interest/project-management-pong/): Pass scope between two managers. A playful game with some deliberately awkward incentives.
- [HS2 Elite](https://experimentsin.ai/wider-interest/hs2-elite/): Fly, dock and trade between six fictional outposts. Railway names become a tiny space adventure.
- [John Burnet of Barns: a journey](https://experimentsin.ai/wider-interest/john-burnet-of-barns-journey.html): Follow a literary journey through the Border country, with a map and room for uncertainty.
- [Johnson’s Dictionary](https://experimentsin.ai/wider-interest/johnsons-dictionary-project.html): A great book as a working project: people, money, promises and nine years of words.
- [Caesar’s rivers](https://experimentsin.ai/wider-interest/caesars_gallic_wars_rivers.html): Follow selected passages from the Gallic War through the rivers that shape them.
- [A fourth dimension](https://experimentsin.ai/wider-interest/polytope.html): Move a slice through a four-dimensional shape. See what appears in three dimensions.
- [Until the conkers ran out](https://experimentsin.ai/wider-interest/conker-season.html): A playground autumn: choose a conker, take your chances, and see how long it lasts.

## Reading the pictures

Working views collects the nets, maps, matrices and screens used inside the examples, rather than project emblems or scene illustrations. Read the caption, depicted state and limitation before opening the example. A screenshot records one view; it does not prove the model’s claims or show its current state. Text descriptions and source links remain available when pictures or interaction are unavailable.

[Working view descriptions](https://experimentsin.ai/agents/visual-atlas.md): captions, limits, depicted states and source images for 111 views.