Colophon

This site is the demo.

Everything you are looking at runs on Fundamental, a reciprocal field engine — the same one documented in the manual and proven live by Habitat. Here is how the machine works.

The field

The background is not a particle effect. It is a live reciprocal field from Fundamental (@fundamental-engine/vanilla): real elements on the page are bodies in it. Cards attract, links tether, the contact node absorbs. Elements bend the field; the field’s density bends them back through CSS variables. Turn on reduced motion and the field yields.

The forces taxonomy

Every piece of content — an essay, a project, a stat — carries a force from an eleven-force taxonomy, and each force maps a discipline to a color. That taxonomy is the spine of the whole site: one JSON file declares it, one module derives every accent color from it, and the field treats the same names as physics.

The semantic article layer

Essays carry a machine-readable field: a thesis, named concepts, a role for every section, and reasoned relationships. The reading page renders it quietly — role glyphs in the table of contents, a concept rail, receipts on demand — and the Read / Receipts / Map / Field toggle lets you read the argument, audit it, or watch the background reshape itself per section role.

The stack

Astro 5, static output, vanilla CSS. No database and no runtime API: content is one JSON spine plus vendored markdown, synced at build time from a separate archive (zach-core) that owns the canonical copy. Dependencies are deliberate and few — the engine, marked, shiki, zod — everything else is written here. The client is disposable; the archive is not.

The eleven forces.

Attract Product strategy · gives direction
Emitter AI systems · adapts response
Spring Software architecture · gives structure
Reflect Experience design · the human surface
Stream Motion · reveals motion
Repel Commerce · market pressure
Drag Physical production · adds constraint
Vortex Creative technology · spins it together
Absorb Attention · holds, then releases
Coherence The resolved whole · the goal
Wall Experience design · the human surface
Read the manual Source on GitHub

MIT licensed · zero runtime dependencies in the core.