Before software can represent a world, you have to understand that world. These are the concepts that keep coming up:
| Concept | What it means here |
|---|---|
| Cat | The actual animal. It exists whether or not anyone has recorded it correctly. |
| Identity | What makes this cat this cat. Not its name, location or owner, which can all be ambiguous. |
| Encounter | A moment when a person sees, feeds, photographs or treats a cat. The basic unit of knowledge. |
| Meeting | The simplest encounter: someone meets a cat and takes its photo. The way in for most people. |
| Card | How a cat is shown and shared: photo, names, coat, neighbourhood, and only what’s safe to show. |
| Place | Where encounters happen: a house, a street, a restaurant, a territory. |
| Person | Anyone who meets the cat: caretaker, neighbour, visitor, vet, rescuer. |
| Care | Feeding, shelter, deworming, sterilisation, vet visits — and who pays for them. |
| Health | What we know about the cat’s condition over time. |
| History | The growing record of everything above, from birth to death (with an obituary), which belongs to the cat. |
| Relationship | Cat ↔ person, cat ↔ place, cat ↔ cat (mothers, litters, rivals, companions). |
| Trust | How confident we are in a claim, and in the person making it. |
Principles so far
- The cat persists, the humans come and go. The record belongs to the cat, not to any caretaker.
- Identity ≠ name, location or ownership. All three are ambiguous.
- Don’t force agreement too early. Gather claims and evidence, and let the truth emerge.
- No one has to be the owner. A cat can simply have a network of people who care about it.
- Cats first. Dogs come later (they’re just a different type of cat).
- Meeting, not owning. People meet cats; no one owns or claims them.
- Fun is the doorway, not the destination. Meeting a cat should be a pleasure, but every feature is there for the cat’s benefit. If fun and the cat’s safety disagree, the cat wins.
Listen: the whole idea in depth
A 38-minute audio deep dive: the stories from Puerto Escondido, then the ideas, the building blocks and the open questions, and what’s new in this version. It was made with Google’s NotebookLM from the pages on this site, so the two voices are AI-generated. There’s also a 90-second introduction to the whole idea.
Speed
Open questions
- Which of these concepts is missing, or should be merged into another?
- Is “Encounter” really the basic unit, or is it “Claim”?