tegwick
fecc2fd4fa
Implements markitect/llm/ package with concrete LLMAdapter implementations:
- OpenRouterAdapter: HTTP via urllib with retry/backoff on 429/5xx
- ClaudeCodeAdapter: subprocess-based Claude CLI with stdin piping
- Factory pattern: create_adapter("openrouter") or create_adapter("claude-code")
- API key resolution chain: constructor > env var > project-root key file
- 42 unit tests, 2 integration tests (gated on API key / CLI availability)
Also adds the infospace-with-history example with Wealth of Nations VSM
analysis pipeline, templates, schemas, source chapters, and processed
output for chapters 1-2. process_chapters.py now supports --provider
and --model flags for automatic LLM-driven processing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
15 KiB
--- ENTITY: division-of-labour ---
Division of Labour
Definition
The separation of a work process into a number of distinct tasks, each performed by a specialised worker, resulting in a significant increase in the productive powers of labour. Smith identifies it as the principal cause of improvement in the productive capacity of any trade, art, or manufacture. The effect arises from three circumstances: increased dexterity, saved time in transition between tasks, and the invention of labour-saving machinery.
Source Chapter
Book I, Chapter 1: "Of the Division of Labour"
Context
The division of labour is the central argument of the chapter. Smith opens by asserting that it is the greatest source of improvement in productive powers, then illustrates it through the pin-factory example, explains its three causal mechanisms, and concludes by showing how it generates universal opulence through exchange.
Economic Domain
Production
Smith's Original Wording
"The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour."
Modern Interpretation
The division of labour remains a foundational concept in economics and organisational theory. Modern extensions include specialisation theory, comparative advantage (Ricardo), and the study of transaction costs that determine the boundaries between internal division and market exchange (Coase).
--- ENTITY: productive-powers-of-labour ---
Productive Powers of Labour
Definition
The capacity of human labour to produce output, measured in terms of the quantity and quality of goods a given number of workers can produce within a given time. Smith argues that the division of labour is the primary cause of increases in productive power, and that differences in productive power explain differences in national wealth.
Source Chapter
Book I, Chapter 1: "Of the Division of Labour"
Context
Smith introduces productive powers as the dependent variable that the division of labour improves. He contrasts the output of an unskilled individual worker (one pin per day) with the output of a coordinated team under division of labour (4,800 pins per person per day) to demonstrate the scale of improvement.
Economic Domain
Production
Smith's Original Wording
"This great increase in the quantity of work, which, in consequence of the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances."
--- ENTITY: dexterity-of-the-workman ---
Dexterity of the Workman
Definition
The skill and speed a worker acquires through repeated performance of a single specialised operation. Smith identifies the increase in dexterity as the first of three causes by which the division of labour improves productive power. Specialisation reduces each worker's task to one simple operation, making it the sole employment of their life, and thereby dramatically increasing their proficiency.
Source Chapter
Book I, Chapter 1: "Of the Division of Labour"
Context
Presented as the first of three mechanisms explaining why the division of labour increases output. Smith illustrates it with the example of nail-making: an unskilled smith makes 200-300 nails per day, while a specialised nailer can produce over 2,300.
Economic Domain
Production
Smith's Original Wording
"First, the improvement of the dexterity of the workmen, necessarily increases the quantity of the work he can perform; and the division of labour, by reducing every man's business to some one simple operation, and by making this operation the sole employment of his life, necessarily increases very much the dexterity of the workman."
--- ENTITY: saving-of-time ---
Saving of Time
Definition
The elimination of time lost when a worker passes from one kind of work to another. Smith identifies this as the second mechanism by which the division of labour increases productive power. Time is lost both in physical transition (moving between locations and tools) and in mental transition (the sauntering and inattention that follows switching tasks).
Source Chapter
Book I, Chapter 1: "Of the Division of Labour"
Context
Presented as the second of three mechanisms. Smith argues the loss is greater than commonly supposed, encompassing not only travel time but a psychological cost: workers who constantly switch tasks develop habits of "sauntering" and "indolent careless application" that reduce their output even during active work.
Economic Domain
Production
Smith's Original Wording
"Secondly, the advantage which is gained by saving the time commonly lost in passing from one sort of work to another, is much greater than we should at first view be apt to imagine it."
--- ENTITY: invention-of-machinery ---
Invention of Machinery
Definition
The development of machines that facilitate and abridge labour, enabling one person to do the work of many. Smith identifies this as the third mechanism by which the division of labour increases productive power, and argues that the division of labour itself stimulates invention, because workers focused on a single operation naturally discover improvements to their specific task.
Source Chapter
Book I, Chapter 1: "Of the Division of Labour"
Context
Presented as the third mechanism. Smith provides the anecdote of the boy who automated the valve on a fire engine to free himself for play. He extends the argument beyond workers to include machine-makers and philosophers (men of speculation), whose own specialised observation enables them to combine knowledge from distant fields.
Economic Domain
Production
Smith's Original Wording
"Thirdly, and lastly, everybody must be sensible how much labour is facilitated and abridged by the application of proper machinery. It is unnecessary to give any example."
--- ENTITY: separation-of-trades ---
Separation of Trades
Definition
The process by which distinct occupations emerge as separate specialisations, each performed by dedicated practitioners rather than by a single person who performs all tasks. Smith presents the separation of trades as both a consequence and an indicator of the division of labour, noting that it advances furthest in the most industrious and improved countries.
Source Chapter
Book I, Chapter 1: "Of the Division of Labour"
Context
Smith transitions from the pin-factory example to the economy-wide observation that in improved societies, "the farmer is generally nothing but a farmer; the manufacturer, nothing but a manufacturer." He contrasts manufacturing, where trades separate extensively, with agriculture, where seasonal demands prevent full separation.
Economic Domain
Production
Smith's Original Wording
"The separation of different trades and employments from one another, seems to have taken place in consequence of this advantage."
--- ENTITY: the-workman ---
The Workman
Definition
The individual labourer who performs productive work, whether in manufacturing or agriculture. In the context of the division of labour, the workman is the operative unit whose dexterity, time, and inventiveness are the channels through which specialisation increases output. Smith portrays the workman both as a beneficiary of the division of labour (higher output) and as its agent (inventing machinery through focused attention).
Source Chapter
Book I, Chapter 1: "Of the Division of Labour"
Context
The workman appears throughout the chapter as the primary actor: the pin-maker, the nailer, the country weaver, the boy at the fire engine. Smith attributes both the productive gains and many mechanical inventions to ordinary workmen.
Economic Domain
Production
--- ENTITY: the-philosopher ---
The Philosopher
Definition
A person whose occupation is observation and speculation rather than direct production — "men of speculation, whose trade it is not to do any thing, but to observe every thing." Smith treats the philosopher as an economic actor whose specialised function is combining knowledge from diverse fields to produce innovations and improvements, analogous to how the workman improves their own narrow task.
Source Chapter
Book I, Chapter 1: "Of the Division of Labour"
Context
Introduced near the end of Smith's discussion of the third mechanism (invention of machinery). Smith notes that as society progresses, philosophy itself becomes a specialised trade, subdivided into branches, with each philosopher becoming expert in their field — the division of labour applied to intellectual work.
Economic Domain
General Theory
Smith's Original Wording
"In the progress of society, philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the principal or sole trade and occupation of a particular class of citizens."
--- ENTITY: universal-opulence ---
Universal Opulence
Definition
The general material well-being that extends across all ranks of society, including the lowest, as a consequence of the division of labour and the resulting multiplication of production. Smith argues that through exchange, every workman can supply others abundantly with their specialised product and receive in return the products of others' specialisation, creating a "general plenty" that benefits even the poorest members of a civilised society.
Source Chapter
Book I, Chapter 1: "Of the Division of Labour"
Context
The concluding argument of the chapter. Smith illustrates universal opulence by examining the "accommodation of the most common artificer or daylabourer," showing that even a coarse woollen coat requires the cooperation of shepherds, wool-combers, dyers, weavers, merchants, sailors, and many others — a vast chain of interdependent labour that would be impossible without specialisation and exchange.
Economic Domain
Distribution
Smith's Original Wording
"It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people."
--- ENTITY: exchange ---
Exchange
Definition
The act of trading one's surplus production for the goods produced by others. Smith presents exchange as the mechanism by which the division of labour translates into universal opulence: each workman disposes of their surplus output and receives in return the surplus of others, so that all are supplied beyond what any individual could produce alone.
Source Chapter
Book I, Chapter 1: "Of the Division of Labour"
Context
Exchange appears in the chapter's conclusion as the connecting mechanism between specialised production and general welfare. Smith implicitly treats it as prerequisite to the division of labour (explored further in Chapter 2), since specialisation only benefits workers if they can trade their surplus.
Economic Domain
Exchange
Smith's Original Wording
"Every workman has a great quantity of his own work to dispose of beyond what he himself has occasion for; and every other workman being exactly in the same situation, he is enabled to exchange a great quantity of his own goods for a great quantity or, what comes to the same thing, for the price of a great quantity of theirs."
--- ENTITY: co-operation-of-labour ---
Co-operation of Labour
Definition
The interdependent collaboration of many workers across different trades and locations to produce a single finished good. Smith demonstrates that even the simplest consumer goods in a civilised society require the combined efforts of thousands of workers — shepherds, miners, sailors, smiths, weavers — who collectively make possible what no individual could achieve alone.
Source Chapter
Book I, Chapter 1: "Of the Division of Labour"
Context
Smith's extended example of the day-labourer's woollen coat serves to illustrate the vast scope of co-operation. He traces the supply chain from raw materials through manufacture and transport to show that civilised consumption depends on an immense network of specialised, interdependent labour.
Economic Domain
Production
Smith's Original Wording
"Without the assistance and co-operation of many thousands, the very meanest person in a civilized country could not be provided, even according to, what we very falsely imagine, the easy and simple manner in which he is commonly accommodated."
--- ENTITY: manufactures ---
Manufactures
Definition
The sector of production in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods through a series of distinct operations, each typically performed by specialised workers. Smith contrasts manufactures with agriculture, noting that the former admits of far greater subdivision of labour and separation of trades, and therefore exhibits far greater improvements in productive power.
Source Chapter
Book I, Chapter 1: "Of the Division of Labour"
Context
Manufactures serve as the primary setting for Smith's analysis of the division of labour. The pin factory is a manufacture; so are the linen, woollen, and hardware trades he references. Smith uses the greater divisibility of manufacturing work to explain why rich countries excel more conspicuously over poor countries in manufactures than in agriculture.
Economic Domain
Production
--- ENTITY: agriculture ---
Agriculture
Definition
The sector of production concerned with the cultivation of land and the raising of crops and livestock. Smith argues that agriculture does not admit of as many subdivisions of labour as manufactures, because seasonal rhythms prevent workers from specialising year-round in a single task. As a result, agricultural productivity improves less dramatically with the division of labour than manufacturing productivity.
Source Chapter
Book I, Chapter 1: "Of the Division of Labour"
Context
Agriculture is introduced as a counterpoint to manufactures. Smith notes that the ploughman, harrower, sower, and reaper are often the same person, and that this is why even rich countries do not surpass poor countries in agricultural output as dramatically as in manufacturing output.
Economic Domain
Production
Smith's Original Wording
"The nature of agriculture, indeed, does not admit of so many subdivisions of labour, nor of so complete a separation of one business from another, as manufactures."