# Viable Infospace Tooling — Roadmap

## Status: CLOSED (2026-04-22)

All three stages complete.

| Stage | Status | Notes |
|-------|--------|-------|
| Stage 1 — Platform additions (S1.1–S1.7) | ✅ Done | Entity parser, schema validator, embeddings, graph analysis, eval I/O, batch orchestrator, FCA |
| Stage 2 — Infospace tooling (S2.1–S2.7)   | ✅ Done | Config model, lifecycle CLI, per-entity eval, collection checks, history, composition, docs |
| Stage 3 — Example revision (S3.1–S3.5)    | ✅ Done (except cosmetic S3.2) | See `roadmap/infospace-s3-closeout/PLAN.md` |

**Final validation (Wealth of Nations / VSM example, 988 entities):**
- 988 per-entity evaluations landed
- Collection checks pass 6/6 viability thresholds (`per_entity_mean = 3.957`
  against threshold 3.5; `redundancy_ratio = 0.006`; `coverage_ratio = 0.619`;
  `coherence_components = 0`; `consistency_cycles = 0`;
  `granularity_entropy = 2.675`)
- Composition demonstrated via `examples/supply-chain-vsm/`
- S3.2 (clean per-chapter git history) deferred as cosmetic-only; rationale
  in the close-out plan

See `roadmap/infospace-s3-closeout/PLAN.md` for the final task-level
disposition and `examples/infospace-with-history/` for the canonical
validated example.

---

## Vision

An **infospace** is a structured, evaluable, composable collection of
concepts that explains a **topic** through the lens of one or more
**disciplines**. Infospaces are the unit of knowledge work in MarkiTect.

This roadmap organises the work needed to move from the current
ad-hoc example (`infospace-with-history`) to a general-purpose platform
for creating, evaluating, maintaining, and composing infospaces.

---

## Terminology

These terms establish the vocabulary for infospace tooling. They
generalise from the Wealth of Nations / VSM example but are not
specific to it.

### Infospace

A curated, self-describing collection of **entities** (concepts,
mechanisms, observations) that together explain a **topic**. An
infospace has:

- A **topic** — the subject matter being explained (e.g. "The Wealth
  of Nations", "cellular biology", "Kubernetes networking")
- One or more **disciplines** — external frameworks applied as lenses
  (e.g. "Viable System Model", "category theory")
- **Entities** — the atomic units of knowledge, each with a definition,
  provenance, and quality scores
- **Schemas** — structural templates that define what a well-formed
  entity, mapping, or analysis looks like
- **Evaluations** — per-entity and collection-level quality assessments
- **Metrics** — quantitative indicators of completeness, coherence,
  consistency, and granularity balance

An infospace is **viable** when it meets threshold scores across its
defined metrics — it is fit for purpose as an explanatory tool.

### Topic

The subject matter an infospace is built to explain. A topic sits
within a **domain** (broader field of knowledge) but is more specific:

- Domain: Economics → Topic: The Wealth of Nations
- Domain: Systems Theory → Topic: Viable System Model
- Domain: Computer Science → Topic: Distributed consensus protocols

A topic provides the **source material** — the texts, data, or
observations from which entities are extracted.

### Discipline

A reusable framework of concepts applied as a lens to explore a topic.
A discipline is itself an infospace — one that has been evaluated as
viable and packaged for reuse.

In our example, the VSM is the discipline: a set of concepts (S1-S5,
recursion, variety, viability) from systems theory, applied to the
economic concepts in Smith's work.

**Key property:** Disciplines compose. An infospace built with one
discipline can itself become a discipline for another infospace. The
Wealth of Nations infospace, viewed through VSM, could become a
discipline applied to a modern supply chain analysis.

### Entity

The atomic unit of an infospace. An entity has:

- **Identity**: a unique slug and human-readable title
- **Definition**: a precise, non-circular explanation
- **Provenance**: the source chapter, passage, and extraction context
- **Domain placement**: which area of the topic it belongs to
- **Discipline mapping**: how it connects to the applied discipline
  (e.g. which VSM system)
- **Quality scores**: per-entity LLM-evaluated metrics
- **Lifecycle state**: active, archived (with reason), or draft

### Evaluation

A structured assessment of quality, applied at two levels:

- **Per-entity evaluation**: scores an individual entity against
  quality rubrics defined in its schema (definition precision, source
  grounding, discipline relevance, etc.)
- **Collection evaluation**: scores the entity set as a whole against
  five concerns: redundancy, coverage, coherence, consistency, and
  granularity balance

Evaluations are always performed by **delegated LLM calls** through
MarkiTect's LLM integration — never by the coding agent working on
infrastructure. This separation ensures that domain-level judgment
stays in the problem space, not the tooling space.

### Viability

An infospace is viable when:

1. Its entities individually meet quality thresholds (per-entity eval)
2. Its collection metrics are within acceptable ranges
3. It can answer its defined **competency questions** — the canonical
   queries the infospace is meant to support
4. It has been evaluated recently enough that metrics reflect current
   content

Viability is not binary — it is a profile of scores that the user
sets thresholds for based on their needs.

---

## Architecture: Three Layers

```
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Layer 3: Infospace Instances                    │
│  Specific infospaces built by users              │
│  (Wealth of Nations + VSM, supply chain + ...)   │
│  Works IN an infospace                           │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Layer 2: Infospace Tooling                      │
│  Terminology, primitives, composition model      │
│  CLI: infospace create/evaluate/compose/...      │
│  Works WITH infospaces                           │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Layer 1: MarkiTect Platform                     │
│  Artifacts, prompts, LLM, spaces, graph, embed   │
│  Provides FOR infospaces                         │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```

### Boundary condition: LLM delegation

All LLM-based evaluation (entity scoring, pairwise judgments, coverage
analysis) is delegated to MarkiTect's LLM integration module. The coding
agent that works on infrastructure never makes domain-level judgments
itself. This keeps a clean separation:

- **Coding agent** → writes Python, templates, schemas, tests
- **MarkiTect LLM** → evaluates entities, judges redundancy, assesses
  coverage, checks consistency

The infospace tooling (Layer 2) orchestrates these LLM calls through
prompt templates and the prompt execution engine, not through ad-hoc
prompting.

---

## Stage 1: MarkiTect Platform Additions

Infrastructure that must exist before infospace tooling can be built.
These are general-purpose platform capabilities, not infospace-specific.

### S1.1 — Entity metadata parser

Add a deterministic markdown parser that extracts structured metadata
from entity files: H1 title, sections present, word counts, domain,
source chapter. Returns a dataclass usable by all downstream metrics.

**Maps to:** INFRA-TASKS #13, #10
**Location:** `markitect/prompts/quality/` or new `markitect/analysis/`
**Depends on:** Nothing — can start immediately
**Deliverable:** `parse_entity_metadata(path) -> EntityMeta` function
with tests

### S1.2 — Schema compliance validator

Deterministic validation of entity/mapping files against their schemas:
section presence, word count ranges, heading format, enum values. No
LLM needed.

**Maps to:** INFRA-TASKS #10
**Location:** `markitect/prompts/quality/validator.py` (extend existing)
**Depends on:** S1.1
**Deliverable:** `validate_document(path, schema) -> ValidationResult`
with tests

### S1.3 — Embedding adapter

Add embedding support to `markitect/llm/`. Needs:

- `EmbeddingAdapter` interface: `embed(texts: list[str]) -> list[list[float]]`
- `OpenRouterEmbeddingAdapter` implementation (or OpenAI embedding endpoint)
- Caching layer: store embeddings keyed by `{slug: content_digest}` so
  unchanged entities skip re-embedding
- Cosine similarity utility: `similarity_matrix(embeddings) -> np.ndarray`

**Maps to:** INFRA-TASKS #14 (prerequisite)
**Location:** `markitect/llm/embeddings.py`
**Depends on:** Nothing — can start immediately
**Deliverable:** Embedding adapter + cache + similarity computation, with
tests

### S1.4 — Graph analysis utilities

The existing `DependencyGraph` supports basic traversal and cycle
detection. Collection-level metrics need richer analysis:

- Connected components
- Betweenness centrality
- Community detection (Louvain or label propagation)
- Modularity score
- Degree distribution
- Cohesion/coupling computation

Decide: extend `DependencyGraph` or add a lightweight wrapper that
converts to networkx (adding it as an optional dependency).

**Maps to:** INFRA-TASKS #16 (prerequisite)
**Location:** `markitect/prompts/dependencies/analysis.py` or new
`markitect/analysis/graph.py`
**Depends on:** Nothing — can start immediately
**Deliverable:** Graph analysis functions with tests

### S1.5 — Structured evaluation output

Define a standard format for evaluation results: YAML front-matter +
markdown body. Add utilities for:

- Writing evaluation results (per-entity, per-pair, collection-level)
- Reading/parsing evaluation results back into dataclasses
- Appending timestamped snapshots to a history file
- Diffing two snapshots

**Maps to:** INFRA-TASKS #11, #12
**Location:** `markitect/prompts/quality/` or `markitect/analysis/`
**Depends on:** S1.1
**Deliverable:** `EvaluationResult` model + read/write utilities with
tests

### S1.6 — Batch LLM evaluation orchestrator

A pipeline component that runs an evaluation prompt template against a
batch of entities (or entity pairs), collecting structured results.
Must handle:

- Rate limiting and retry (reuse existing adapter logic)
- Progress reporting
- Incremental evaluation (skip entities whose content hasn't changed
  since last eval)
- Result aggregation

This is the mechanism by which infospace tooling delegates LLM work
to the platform.

**Maps to:** INFRA-TASKS #9 (prerequisite)
**Location:** `markitect/prompts/execution/batch.py`
**Depends on:** S1.5
**Deliverable:** `BatchEvaluator` class with tests

### S1.7 — FCA computation

Formal Concept Analysis: build a formal context (entity × attribute
matrix), compute the concept lattice, extract gap concepts. Either
implement a minimal FCA algorithm or integrate a library.

**Maps to:** INFRA-TASKS #15 (prerequisite)
**Location:** `markitect/analysis/fca.py`
**Depends on:** S1.1
**Deliverable:** `FormalContext`, `ConceptLattice`, `find_gap_concepts()`
with tests

### Summary: Stage 1 dependency graph

```
S1.1 Entity metadata parser ──┬── S1.2 Schema validator
                               ├── S1.5 Eval output format ── S1.6 Batch evaluator
                               └── S1.7 FCA computation

S1.3 Embedding adapter ──────── (independent)
S1.4 Graph analysis ─────────── (independent)
```

S1.1, S1.3, and S1.4 can proceed in parallel. S1.6 (batch evaluator) is
the final piece needed before Stage 2 can begin.

---

## Stage 2: Infospace Tooling

The user-facing layer that provides documented primitives for working
with infospaces. Built on top of Stage 1 infrastructure and the existing
`markitect/spaces/` module.

### S2.1 — Infospace model and configuration

Define the `Infospace` as a first-class concept that extends the existing
`InformationSpace` with:

- **Topic declaration**: name, domain, source material reference
- **Discipline bindings**: which external infospaces are applied as lenses
- **Schema registry**: which schemas govern entity structure
- **Competency questions**: what the infospace should be able to answer
- **Viability thresholds**: minimum acceptable metric scores
- **Evaluation state**: latest per-entity and collection scores

Configuration format: a `infospace.yaml` (or section in existing config)
that declares all of the above.

**Location:** new `markitect/infospace/` package
**Depends on:** S1.1, S1.5, existing `markitect/spaces/`
**Deliverable:** `InfospaceConfig`, `InfospaceState` models + loader

### S2.2 — Infospace lifecycle commands

CLI commands for the core lifecycle:

```bash
# Initialise a new infospace
markitect infospace init --topic "Wealth of Nations" \
  --domain "Economics" \
  --discipline vsm-framework

# Show infospace status (entity count, eval state, viability)
markitect infospace status

# List entities with quality summary
markitect infospace entities [--sort-by score|domain|chapter]

# Show viability dashboard
markitect infospace viability
```

These commands read the `infospace.yaml` config and present information
from the metadata index and evaluation results.

**Location:** `markitect/infospace/cli.py` integrated into main CLI
**Depends on:** S2.1
**Deliverable:** CLI commands with help text and tests

### S2.3 — Per-entity evaluation primitives

Prompt templates and CLI commands for evaluating individual entities:

```bash
# Evaluate all entities
markitect infospace evaluate --provider openrouter

# Evaluate entities from a specific chapter
markitect infospace evaluate --chapter book-1-chapter-05 --provider openrouter

# Re-evaluate a single entity
markitect infospace evaluate --entity division-of-labour --provider openrouter
```

Uses the batch evaluator (S1.6) to run the evaluate-entity prompt
template (defined in the infospace's schema directory) against entities.
Writes structured results to `output/evaluations/`.

**Maps to:** INFRA-TASKS #8, #9
**Location:** `markitect/infospace/evaluation.py`
**Depends on:** S1.6, S2.1
**Deliverable:** Per-entity evaluation pipeline + CLI + prompt template

### S2.4 — Collection-level checks

CLI commands for each of the five collection concerns:

```bash
# Run all collection checks
markitect infospace check --provider openrouter

# Run specific checks
markitect infospace check redundancy --provider openrouter
markitect infospace check coverage --provider openrouter
markitect infospace check coherence --provider openrouter
markitect infospace check consistency --provider openrouter
markitect infospace check granularity --provider openrouter
```

Each check uses Stage 1 infrastructure (embeddings, graph analysis, FCA)
and delegates LLM judgment to the platform. Results written to
`output/metrics/` as per-concern reports + unified `metrics.yaml`.

**Maps to:** INFRA-TASKS #14-19
**Location:** `markitect/infospace/checks/` (one module per concern)
**Depends on:** S1.3, S1.4, S1.6, S1.7, S2.1
**Deliverable:** Five check modules + unified orchestrator + CLI

### S2.5 — Metrics history and viability tracking

Track metrics over time. After each evaluation or check run, append a
timestamped snapshot to `metrics-history.yaml`. Provide commands to
review trends:

```bash
# Show metrics history
markitect infospace history

# Compare two snapshots
markitect infospace history diff 2026-02-18 2026-03-01

# Check viability against thresholds
markitect infospace viability
```

Viability is assessed by comparing current metrics to the thresholds
declared in `infospace.yaml`. A simple pass/fail per metric with the
actual value.

**Maps to:** INFRA-TASKS #12
**Location:** `markitect/infospace/history.py`
**Depends on:** S2.4, S1.5
**Deliverable:** History tracking + viability assessment + CLI

### S2.6 — Infospace composition model

The mechanism by which one infospace is applied as a discipline to
another. Builds on `markitect/spaces/composability/`:

- **Discipline binding**: declare that infospace A uses infospace B as a
  discipline. B's entities become available as mapping targets.
- **Cross-infospace references**: entity in A maps to concept in B using
  the same mapping schema and evaluation pipeline.
- **Discipline viability requirement**: B must be viable (meets its own
  thresholds) before it can be used as a discipline for A.
- **Cascading evaluation**: when B's entities change, A's mappings that
  reference them are flagged for re-evaluation.

```bash
# Bind a discipline to the current infospace
markitect infospace bind-discipline ./path/to/vsm-infospace

# List bound disciplines and their viability
markitect infospace disciplines

# Check for stale mappings after discipline update
markitect infospace check stale-mappings
```

**Location:** `markitect/infospace/composition.py`
**Depends on:** S2.1, existing `markitect/spaces/composability/`
**Deliverable:** Composition model + CLI + documentation

### S2.7 — Documentation: Infospace Primitives Reference

A reference document explaining all primitives, their purpose, and how
they compose. This is the user-facing documentation for the infospace
tooling layer — the equivalent of a framework guide.

**Location:** `docs/infospace-primitives.md` or in-CLI help
**Depends on:** S2.1-S2.6
**Deliverable:** Reference documentation

### Summary: Stage 2 dependency graph

```
S2.1 Model & config ──┬── S2.2 Lifecycle CLI
                       ├── S2.3 Per-entity evaluation
                       ├── S2.4 Collection checks ── S2.5 History & viability
                       └── S2.6 Composition model

S2.7 Documentation (depends on all above)
```

---

## Stage 3: Example Revision

Revisit the Wealth of Nations / VSM example using the new tooling.
The example becomes both a tutorial and a validation of the tooling.

### S3.1 — Migrate example to infospace configuration

Replace the ad-hoc `process_chapters.py` setup with a declarative
`infospace.yaml`:

```yaml
topic:
  name: "The Wealth of Nations"
  domain: "Classical Economics"
  sources: artifacts/sources/

disciplines:
  - name: "Viable System Model"
    path: artifacts/vsm-reference/

schemas:
  entity: schemas/economic-entity-schema-v1.0.md
  mapping: schemas/vsm-mapping-schema-v1.0.md
  analysis: schemas/chapter-analysis-schema-v1.0.md

competency_questions: schemas/competency-questions.md

viability:
  redundancy_ratio: { max: 0.05 }
  coverage_ratio: { min: 0.60 }
  coherence_components: { max: 1 }
  consistency_cycles: { max: 0 }
  granularity_entropy: { min: 1.0 }
  per_entity_mean: { min: 3.5 }

pipeline:
  stages:
    - template: extract-entities
      spaces: [sources, guidelines, vsm-reference, entities]
    - template: map-to-vsm
      spaces: [entities, vsm-reference, guidelines]
    - template: synthesize-analysis
      spaces: [sources, entities, mappings, vsm-reference]
  post_batch:
    - template: assess-metrics
      spaces: [analyses, vsm-reference]
```

**Depends on:** S2.1
**Deliverable:** `infospace.yaml` + migration of `process_chapters.py` to
use infospace tooling APIs

### S3.2 — Clean per-chapter git history

Re-run all processed chapters (and remaining ones) with per-chapter
commits on a clean branch, then replace the current tangled history.

**Maps to:** INFRA-TASKS #4, #7
**Depends on:** S3.1
**Deliverable:** Clean branch with one commit per chapter

### S3.3 — Full evaluation run

Run all per-entity evaluations and collection checks on the completed
infospace. Establish baseline metrics. Demonstrate the viability
dashboard.

**Maps to:** INFRA-TASKS #6
**Depends on:** S2.3, S2.4, S2.5, S3.2
**Deliverable:** Complete evaluation results + viability report

### S3.4 — Rewrite tutorial

Update `TUTORIAL.md` to use infospace tooling commands instead of
raw `process_chapters.py` invocations. The tutorial should walk
through:

1. Initialising an infospace (`markitect infospace init`)
2. Defining schemas and competency questions
3. Processing chapters (pipeline execution)
4. Evaluating entities (`markitect infospace evaluate`)
5. Running collection checks (`markitect infospace check`)
6. Reviewing viability (`markitect infospace viability`)
7. Iterating: refining guidelines, re-processing, re-evaluating
8. Using the infospace as a discipline for a new project

**Depends on:** S3.1-S3.3
**Deliverable:** Revised `TUTORIAL.md`

### S3.5 — Demonstrate composition

Create a minimal second infospace (e.g. a modern supply chain case
study or a different economic text) that binds the Wealth of Nations
infospace as a discipline. Demonstrates the composition model from S2.6.

**Depends on:** S2.6, S3.3
**Deliverable:** Second example infospace + composition tutorial section

---

## Task Mapping

Cross-reference between INFRA-TASKS numbers and roadmap stages:

| INFRA-TASK | Description | Stage |
|------------|-------------|-------|
| 1-3 | Infra fixes (resolved) | — |
| 4 | Per-chapter git history | S3.2 |
| 5 | Prompt file side-effects | S1.6 (batch eval avoids this) |
| 6 | Stale metrics | S3.3 |
| 7 | Remaining 28 chapters | S3.2 |
| 8 | Per-concept quality metrics in schema | S2.3 |
| 9 | Evaluate-entity prompt template | S2.3 |
| 10 | Deterministic schema compliance | S1.2 |
| 11 | Structured metrics output | S1.5 |
| 12 | Metrics-over-time tracking | S2.5 |
| 13 | Entity metadata index | S1.1 |
| 14 | Redundancy detection (C1) | S2.4 |
| 15 | Coverage completeness (C2) | S2.4 |
| 16 | Structural coherence (C3) | S2.4 |
| 17 | Definitional consistency (C4) | S2.4 |
| 18 | Granularity balance (C5) | S2.4 |
| 19 | Unified collection evaluation | S2.4 |

---

## Implementation Order

Recommended sequence, accounting for dependencies and value delivery:

**Phase A — Foundation (Stage 1, parallelisable)**
1. S1.1 Entity metadata parser
2. S1.3 Embedding adapter
3. S1.4 Graph analysis utilities

**Phase B — Validation & Output (Stage 1)**
4. S1.2 Schema compliance validator (needs S1.1)
5. S1.5 Structured evaluation output (needs S1.1)
6. S1.7 FCA computation (needs S1.1)

**Phase C — Orchestration (Stage 1 → Stage 2 bridge)**
7. S1.6 Batch LLM evaluation orchestrator (needs S1.5)

**Phase D — Infospace Core (Stage 2)**
8. S2.1 Infospace model and configuration
9. S2.2 Lifecycle commands
10. S2.3 Per-entity evaluation primitives (needs S1.6, S2.1)

**Phase E — Collection Intelligence (Stage 2)**
11. S2.4 Collection-level checks (needs S1.3, S1.4, S1.7, S2.1)
12. S2.5 Metrics history and viability tracking

**Phase F — Composition (Stage 2)**
13. S2.6 Infospace composition model
14. S2.7 Documentation

**Phase G — Example (Stage 3)**
15. S3.1 Migrate example to infospace config
16. S3.2 Clean per-chapter history
17. S3.3 Full evaluation run
18. S3.4 Rewrite tutorial
19. S3.5 Demonstrate composition