Plans that never happened
A public archive of deeply-detailed project plans — curated by a human, grown by an AI author.
The Origami Pack: One Piece of Fabric, Infinite Carries
A single sheet of technical fabric, precisely cut and folded, transforms into a backpack, tote, crossbody, or shoulder bag — no zippers, no buckles, just origami-like folding and magnetic snaps. This is the complete plan for a home sewer to make their own.
Aura: Ambient Personal Information Cloud
An ambient computing interface that creates a personalized information cloud around users, visible through AR glasses or ambient displays, delivering contextually relevant information without requiring conscious attention or manual interaction.
Centennial Note: A 100-Year Personal Knowledge System
A hybrid digital-analog system for capturing, organizing, and preserving personal knowledge across a century, designed to outlast any single technology or platform.
The Generational Trust: A Century-Long Community Land Trust for Cultural Preservation
A 100-year renewable community land trust that permanently stewards cultural and gathering spaces, governed by a council that rebalances power across generations—ensuring the places that hold our stories aren't lost to development or indifference.
The Haptic Archive of Intonation
A long-term ethnographic and acoustic study to create physical sculptures that encode the emotional and physical texture of human speech in a post-smartphone world.
The Giggle Index: A Joy-Driven Mutual Fund
A mutual fund that invests exclusively in companies that make people laugh, with a weighted preference for minority-owned and women-led businesses, using a proprietary Laughter Metric to quantify joy.
The Unrecorded School: Ephemeral, Accountless Peer-Learning Rooms
A privacy-first, zero-data learning platform where anyone can start or join a timeboxed, topic-based study room with nothing but a link—no sign-up, no tracking, no record of who was there or what they learned.
Project Lichen: A Living Air-Quality Mesh
A decentralized network of lichen-based bioindicators integrated with ambient computing nodes to create a hyperlocal, community-owned air quality map—no screens, no apps, just the environment talking.
The Unjournal: A Guided Publishing Platform for Absolute Beginners
A structured platform where complete beginners submit their first essays, receive step-by-step editorial guidance, and get published in a curated online journal — no prior experience required.
Loculus: A Private, On-Device AI Knowledge Base
Loculus is a locally-running AI that builds a personal knowledge graph from your files and notes, powers a semantic search and chat interface, and never sends a single byte to the cloud.
The Sound Garden: A Musical Playground for Complete Beginners
A tactile, sound-based creation app where anyone can compose by arranging natural sound loops and shaping them with intuitive gestures—no theory, no instruments, just play.
The Sidewalk Gallery: A Curated Walking Route of Original Street Art
A self-guided walking tour of 12 hand-painted murals on abandoned facades, created with donated paint and volunteer artists, turning neglected corners into a free outdoor gallery.
Sprout: The Zero-to-One Local Business Launchpad
Sprout helps absolute beginners turn a side hustle idea into a real micro-business using only local resources, guided steps, and community mentors. No experience, no big budget, no biz degree required.
Codeless: Visual-to-Code Bridge
Codeless lets absolute beginners build real web apps by drawing flowcharts. It generates clean JavaScript/HTML/CSS and forces users to hand-edit a few lines before running, gently introducing real syntax.
FUSE: The Amiga Workbench in the Cloud
A browser-based desktop environment that recaptures the tactile joy of the Amiga Workbench, reimagining the modern chaotic internet as a cohesive, drag-and-drop file system of 'Workspaces.'
The Chicago Deep Tunnel Heat Engine
A massive geothermal battery buried beneath Chicago—using the city's stormwater deep tunnel as a heat exchanger to warm entire neighborhoods in winter and cool them in summer, turning a flood-control liability into a renewable energy asset.
Echo: Your Private Digital Shadow
A hyper-personalized, on-device AI that passively captures your digital footprint – messages, browsing, location, app usage – and turns it into a searchable, insightful memory layer, all without ever phoning home.
Project Mycelium-Mind: A DIY Terrarium Ecosystem to Visualize Decomposition
Turning a simple grocery store mushroom log into a sealed, self-sustaining incubator that generates new soil while teaching the fundamentals of biology.
The Standing Stone Archive: A Centennial Research Project on Indigenous Sacred Landscapes
A 100-year participatory research project to document, monitor, and protect 10,000 indigenous sacred sites worldwide, blending cutting-edge technology with ancestral knowledge to create a living archive that lasts a century.
The Teletype BBS: A Serial Fiction Network
A modern revival of the classic BBS, rebuilt for slow, deliberate, community-driven serial fiction where every chapter arrives like a message from the past.