Philosophy

Navigate and Edit

MOOs gave users three primitives: look, move, and script. Scripting was powerful but created a barrier — the world was shaped by those who could program it.

Aspect replaces script with edit. The primitives become navigate and edit. Everyone who can move through the space can also reshape it.

Cards, Not Pages

A card is small, atomic, composable. It's not a document or a page — it's a single facet of existence. A trait. A place. A relationship. A state.

Cards have edges to other cards. The graph of cards is the world. There's no separate map or index — the structure emerges from connections.

Identity as Exploration

In most systems, you define who you are upfront: pick a name, fill out a profile, choose attributes. In Aspect, identity emerges from navigation. Where you go, what you edit, which edges you follow — these are the gestures of selfhood.

Definitions Over Behavior

What something is matters more than what it does. A card's text content defines it. Behavior — if any — emerges from the definitions, not from attached scripts or event handlers.

The World Speaks to You

A MOO makes you speak to the world — learn verb syntax, type commands, parse errors. Aspect inverts this: the world shows you where you are, what's here, and what you can do. Structure becomes interface through projection. Semantics come from portable world packs, not hardcoded categories. See Architecture for the full conceptual stack.