THE BOOK · MODE TWO
INSTRUMENTS
Interactive forms — the reader operates them. Every one carries an always-present text fallback, so the point survives with the interaction removed.
ON THIS FLOOR / 15 INSTRUMENTS
Anatomy
instrument
@chrishayuk/hause/components/forms/Anatomy
An annotated cutaway, fully disclosed — nothing behind a click. Here: the anatomy of a HAUSE chapter.
A CHAPTER — THE ANATOMY
Five parts. One rule each.
Small caps, accent or mist. Names the section the way a museum names a room — before the visitor reads a word of it.
Fraunces at weight 480, leading under one. The claim, carrying the room. Numbers never appear here.
Inter, one idea per sentence. The explanation walks beside the reader.
The mechanism, shown. Etched hatch on the page ground, the single accent doing the pointing.
The plain sentence that survives everything — reduced motion, no JavaScript, a crawler, a hurry.
Structure is fixed. Atmosphere is variable.
Five parts. One rule each. — kicker · headline · body · figure · fallback.
Decomposition
instrument
@chrishayuk/hause/components/forms/Decomposition
One object, its parts, the thing that assembles them — stepped by hand. Its cinematic sibling, Unfolding, takes identical props.
AN ARGUMENT — DECOMPOSED
one argument
A thing worth saying, before it is organised.
01 / 03 — one argument
one argument decomposes into OBSERVE, CLAIM, TEST, CONCEDE — which the record assembles into an argument a reader can audit.
ExpertField
instrument
@chrishayuk/hause/components/forms/ExpertField
A field of units, mostly dormant; each scenario lights the subset that answers it.
Most of a system sits idle on any one question.
4 / 36 UNITS ACTIVE — A QUESTION OF TYPE
Selection is the interesting part — which few answer, and why. The field makes the routing visible.
Across 3 scenarios shown here, only 4 of 36 units activate on average — which ones depends on the input.
Comparison
instrument
@chrishayuk/hause/components/forms/Comparison
One object, two interpretations, dragged between. Its cinematic sibling, Transformation, performs the same argument.
ONE DESIGN SYSTEM — TWO INTERPRETATIONS
the same four commitments, either way
- Described in prose
- Drifts from the code
- Read once, then trusted
the same four commitments, either way — as a style guide: described in prose, drifts from the code, read once, then trusted. As a specimen book: rendered by the real forms, cannot drift — it is the code, visited, and operated.
Variants
instrument
@chrishayuk/hause/components/forms/Variants
One identity, physically present variants, a staged swap — and a designed refusal for the absent one.
ONE PHOTOGRAPH — THREE PRINTS
The photograph never changes. The print is chosen.
contact-print · baseline
fidelity faithful
contact-print · baseline
fidelity faithful
half-tone
fidelity coarse
platinum
fidelity —
the print does not exist
The refusal gets more design attention than the success path. That is the point.
The photograph never changes. The print is chosen. — 2 physically present variants (contact-print, half-tone); baseline contact-print. Selecting an absent variant fails closed. A catalogue never lies about its holdings.
Ladder
instrument
@chrishayuk/hause/components/forms/Ladder
A gated progression — rungs climbed in order, each closed only by its own criterion.
A FORM'S WAY INTO THE LIBRARY — FOUR RUNGS, THE THIRD DOING THE WORK
No rung is skipped. A form that arrives without a page behind it is a Card wearing a costume — and one that arrives without a second exhibition behind it is a claim about the author's imagination rather than about the form.
discovered (passed) → built (passed) → reused (building) → promoted (passed) — each rung closed only by its own gate, in order.
Agreement
instrument
@chrishayuk/hause/components/forms/Agreement
N independently-derived values that must be identical — with a FAIL row, because an invariant you never see fail is decoration.
THE SPECIMEN INVARIANT
Library ≡ Book ≡ Site
Library
the form's code
Book
this page
Site
a consumer
Variants v1
Variants v1
Variants v1
PASS
One import path, three renderers — nothing to reconcile.
Variants v1
screenshot of v0
Variants v1
FAIL
The classic drift: a book showing pictures of forms instead of forms. This site refuses it by construction.
Library ≡ Book ≡ Site — 1 of 2 rows agree; any disagreement is a distinct, named failure, never a warning.
Derivation
instrument
@chrishayuk/hause/components/forms/Derivation
A value folded down a graded scale by caps — derived, never asserted.
HOW POLISHED A PAGE MAY CLAIM TO BE
finished
Every form real, every fallback present, both themes designed.
composed
The forms are real but a caption or two still drifts.
drafted
Structure in place, copy provisional.
sketched
Boxes and intentions.
CAP 1
One caption still placeholder text.
finished ↓ composed
CAP 2
The dark theme unreviewed.
composed ↓ drafted
DERIVED
drafted
A page cannot claim above its derived level. It may voluntarily claim below it.
finished → capped by one caption still placeholder text. → composed → capped by the dark theme unreviewed. → drafted — derived, never asserted.
ByteMap
instrument
@chrishayuk/hause/components/forms/ByteMap
A physical layout drawn to scale — each field's width is its width in bytes. The one place a page should feel like an engineering drawing.
A TIMESTAMP RECORD — WORKED EXAMPLE
Twelve bytes, drawn to scale
12 bytes · little-endian · a demonstration record, not a standard
Terminal
instrument
@chrishayuk/hause/components/forms/Terminal
A query surface as an instrument: the form is the chrome, the meaning is one executor function passed in. Promoted from vindex3.org's Explorer, where it fronts a live query endpoint.
THE LIBRARY — A SPECIMEN SHELL
A terminal is chrome plus an executor. The executor is the argument.
Connected — the HAUSE library · 35 forms · read from the manifest
The executor derives from manifest.ts — the same index the holdings page reads
Type HELP, or start with SHOW FORMS;
The form owns the banner, scrollback, prompt, seed chips, CLEAR, and the sounds. The meaning — what a line does — is one function passed in by the page, so the language's discipline lives in exactly one place. On vindex3.org the same form fronts a live public query endpoint; here it browses this library.
Promoted from vindex3.org's Explorer. The refusal seed is deliberate: try DELETE.
Gating
instrument
@chrishayuk/hause/components/forms/Gating
Expand, judge, compress — performed by widths. Promoted from vindex3.org's Anatomy, where the stages are a model's gate/up/down tensors; here, an editor's day.
one sentence of intent
The idea arrives small.
A sentence of intent — everything the piece must say, in no particular shape.
Expand, judge, compress. The form's widths carry the argument; the content is the caller's — on vindex3.org these stages are a model's gate, up, and down projections and the payoff lines are container addresses.
Lens
instrument
@chrishayuk/hause/components/forms/Lens
One concept, one URL, three depths — the explanation, the object, and the words that govern it. The chosen depth is remembered across pages and written into the fragment; every panel stays in the DOM, so the normative text is legible whether or not the tab was clicked. Built for vindex3.org's representation chapter, where LEARN, INSPECT and SPEC are prose, a live instrument, and the ABI clause itself.
MACHINE LEGIBILITY — THREE DEPTHS
LEGIBILITY IS PART OF THE GRAMMAR
A design system for AI cuts both ways: models compose answers from the forms, and machines — crawlers, answer engines, agent browsers — have to be able to read what the forms say. So the library carries it rather than each site bolting it on: an answer-first form with a stable anchor, structured data projected from the records a page already holds, ARIA state on every instrument, and nothing that lives only inside an animation.
What is machine legibility, in a design system?
It is the discipline of making a designed page readable by machines without changing what a person sees: the question asked the way people ask it, answered in one lift-able paragraph with a stable anchor; JSON-LD projected from the same records the forms render; query-shaped titles above designed headings; ARIA state on every instrument. The test travels with the install — strip the page to text, and it should still answer the question it was designed to answer.
the library README — Machine legibility — SEO and AEO as design-system concerns
HAUSE is a design system for AI, and that cuts both ways: AIs compose answers from the forms, and machines — crawlers, answer engines, agent browsers — must be able to read what the forms say. Legibility to machines is not an afterthought bolted onto a site; it is part of the grammar, carried by the library itself:
- The `Answer` form. A natural-language question as a real heading and a 40–100 word answer a reader or a machine can lift whole, with a stable anchor so the exact question is citable — not just the page. It sits beneath the editorial surface and says the plain thing plainly; the beautiful heading keeps its job.
- `seo.ts` + `JsonLd`. Builders that emit structured data from records a site already holds — WebSite, TechArticle, BreadcrumbList, DefinedTerm (a knowledge-graph entity, said in schema.org), SoftwareApplication, QAPage. The crawlable answer can never drift from the rendered one, because both project from the same record.
- Query-shaped `<title>`, designed headings. The browser title says what the page answers, in the words people search with; the visible HAUSE heading stays exactly as designed. You get both, always.
- ARIA state on every instrument. Agent browsers read
aria-pressed,aria-expanded, and labels to understand interactive interfaces — the Terminal's DESIGNED|RAW|GRAPH tabs carry them, and every new
The same subject at the depth you want it: what it means, the form that does it, and the doctrine in the library's own words.
Machine legibility — learn: what it means · inspect: the form that does it · spec: the doctrine, verbatim. One concept, one URL, the depth of your choosing.
Provenance
instrument
@chrishayuk/hause/components/forms/Provenance
The publication record beneath a page: one quiet evidence line at rest — published, revised, version, and a DOI only where one has been registered — expanding to the identifiers and the dated history. The specimen is this site's own record, and there is no DOI in it because none exists.
PUBLISHED 29 AUG 2026 · REVISED 9 SEP 2026 · VERSION 0.1.0
CITErepository github.com/chrishayuk/hause · site build 3ee5339 · built 2026-09-09 · forms held 35
Citation
instrument
@chrishayuk/hause/components/forms/Citation
The reference itself. Plain is selected by default, so the citation is in the served HTML before a line of JavaScript runs; BibTeX, APA and CSL-JSON sit behind tabs. Three formats, because CSL-JSON becomes the other three hundred.
CITE THIS SPECIMEN — AND THIS SITE
Software · 0.1.0
Hay, C. (2026). HAUSE — a design system for AI (Version 0.1.0). hause.design. https://hause.design
FollowReveal
instrument
@chrishayuk/hause/components/forms/FollowReveal
A path through connected ideas, replayed at the hause stagger.
The three modes are one path through the whole library.
Two instruments have cinematic siblings that take identical props — see them perform.