sketch

Hypotyposis Protocol

Discover what a form should be by encountering concrete versions and reacting to them, until the user recognizes one version they encountered as the form for their purpose. Type: (FitUnrecognized, Hybrid, SKETCH-RECOGNIZE-CYCLE, FormIntentSeed) → RecognizedForm.

Definition

Hypotyposis (ὑποτύπωσις): an outline or sketch — a first drawing of a position rather than its finished statement. A dialogical act for the moment when a form has to be made and the intent behind it cannot yet be settled from descriptions: the user can say what is wrong with a thing in front of them long before they can say what the thing should be, because good fit has no positive description of its own while each misfit can be pointed at (Alexander, 1964). So the user need not specify the form first. The AI relays what the next versions will try — what they revise, how many, the medium each is realized in and what that medium can and cannot show, and where each will be — each with its basis, and then makes them. Each round shows the new versions first, in a medium in which the qualities the user's judgment concerns can be encountered, and then the standing: what the user's words set and on which version, what of the AI's they took, what rests on a check, and what stays unestablished. The user reacts in their own words — a mark, a keep, a request, a value set — and the AI revises the versions those words point to into new versions, never regenerating one from a description of it, and may also make versions it would propose. The AI's reading of the purpose grows from those reactions rather than being settled up front: each part names the person's words or the gathered material it came from, or is marked as a default of its own. The run closes when the user takes one version they encountered as the form for their purpose, its home shown in the round or named in that same turn; they can stop at any time, and the run stays as it stood, with what they ask done to the versions as they stop carried out. Once it has run, the user can point at one version as they met it and say "this is the form, for this purpose", seeing where it lives, where the passed-over versions are, what they asked done to any of them that is not yet observed done, and which values rest on their own words or on the AI's proposals they took, and what rests on checked evidence. The recognition establishes their judgment of fit for that purpose on what the version showed — not correctness against a standard outside preference, and not readiness for use.