Product Recurringintelligence

Intention Shown as Intention

What's planned looks planned, and only what's real looks solid.

In a place that shows plans, claims or futures, holding the tension between plans needing to be seen and plans passing for progress, the design reveals how real each thing is and grounds only what has happened. People can then witness the true state of things and sit-with an open future, and the place gains honest, spacious and unhurried.

Context

Any surface that mixes what is with what is meant to be: a status on a card, a roadmap, a funder page, a record of outcomes. It links up to the quality honest directly, and sits beside Show the Route (where a thing came from) and Machine Carries, Human Judges (whose voice it is). Each marks a kind of truth on the thing itself.

Tensions

Plans and futures need to be visible, to coordinate a team or attract aligned people.
Plans shouldn't pass for progress, and a named future shouldn't pass for a promise.
Some futures belong to people who haven't decided yet, so specifying them takes the decision away.
Hidden: every instinct says to cover an evidence gap with scale and atmosphere.

Forces the design applies

reveal on reveal ↔ obscurehow real each thing is, on its face: shape, depth or label
ground on abstract ↔ groundonly what has happened is drawn solid, dated and specific
release on attract ↔ releasewhat is only intended: hollow, paler or further back

Solution

Give every plan, claim and future a visible degree of reality, and draw only what has happened as solid. What moves a thing from intended to real is a written rule, not a mood.

The generative parameter is how many grades, and what promotes a thing between them. Collab OS uses two, split where work starts (scheduled is a ring, underway a dot). ReVillage used three, by distance, and left the farthest empty for the community to fill. Jan Bruch uses two, with the promotion rule written into his content spec.

 ○ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ●            intended, then real          (Collab OS)
 ░░░░   ▒▒▒▒   ████            far, middle, near            (ReVillage)
 trajectory ──▶ evidence       the label waits for proof    (Jan Bruch)

Acts

Strengthens: witness (seeing how far along things truly are), sit-with (a future left open can be stayed with instead of acted on), cocreate (ReVillage's far horizon was left for the village to shape).
Weakens: buy, in the sense of buying into a future dressed as a fact.
Gap this surfaced: no act for calibrate, deciding how far to rely on what's shown. It's what this pattern serves most directly.

Qualities it gives the place

HonestSpaciousUnhurried

Refuses

Fake activity indicators no synthetic "busyness"; the sync timestamp is real or absent
Over-promise A plan or a hope presented as if it were already a commitment, or already done.

McLuhan check

Enhances: planning in public without lying; trust in whatever is drawn solid.
Retrieves: the sketch that looks like a sketch; aerial perspective; the forecaster's cone.
Obsolesces: the dated roadmap that reads every future as a commitment.
Reverses into: permanent hedging, where everything stays "trajectory" and nothing is ever claimed. Or a solid mark that lies, because the encoding is only as honest as the rule that fills it.

Required companion: the promotion rule is written down and someone holds it. The grade is never color alone: "Shape first, color second."

Connections

Rolls up to: honest
Completes: none yet
Siblings: Machine Carries, Human Judges, Show the Route
Completed by: none yet
Not yet written: Intention Open, Reality Solid, Soft Disclosure Of Future, Trajectory Until Evidence

Seen in

Collab OS: "Shape first, color second. An open ring for what's intended, a filled dot for what's real, legible from 6px to 20px." It answers a line in the action docs: "Is what we are doing the same as what we mean to do? Probably not."
ReVillage (April prototype): "Foreground · 2026", "Middle distance · 2027–2028", "Far horizon · listening": "Other shapes, still emerging. … We'll share more as the listening lands." Replaced on 5/25 by the Three Horizons model, which keeps the horizon--far class but no longer grades certainty.
Jan Bruch (concept): "The launch label is Trajectory. It becomes Evidence only when at least one concrete outcome, shipped artifact, or approved client statement is present." The concept prints outcomes: none published. James's premise: "A builder who marks the limit of what he can prove, in public, has already shown the judgment he's selling."
The DPL itself: P4's status ladder, and A Language in the Field's legend: "open = intention, solid = reality".

Elsewhere

Precedents Buxton's sketch vs. prototype (a sketch should look like a sketch) · IPCC calibrated uncertainty language · Now / Next / Later roadmaps · aerial perspective in landscape painting

In nature Aerial perspective: near hills are sharp and dark, far ones pale and soft, so the eye reads distance from how much detail survives.

Recurring. (three of our projects; live only in Collab OS). Not yet grounded, and ReVillage's instance has since been replaced.