Toto Tvalavadze

Research · Stream

Tools for Thought

Active · 1 entry since 2026-10 · updated 2026-10-02 · RSS

How people think with tools, and how tools can stay out of the way. This stream covers plain-text systems, notebooks, and software that keeps files in the open, where people, applications, and agents can all read them.

Finished tools live in Project Humane. This is the research behind them: experiments, small findings, and questions that haven’t settled yet. Related: Plaintext Commons and the Unbound Notebook System.

Entries

· 001 · Progress

The studio catalog starts as plain files

The catalog behind the studio twin, the one I’ll fill by photographing drawers, starts as a folder of plain files rather than a database:

inventory/
places.json       # generated from the 3D model, one record per slot
movables.json     # boxes and carts, and where each one is
items.jsonl       # one line per thing: name, English and Italian aliases, category, place, count, last seen
captures/
  inbox/          # new photos
  2026-10-02/     # photos and what Claude read, before confirmation

The places come out of the model build, so they never drift from the 3D model. Each thing is one line, so every change is a readable diff. Claude reads a photo and edits the files; I review the change as a git diff and confirm it, the same way I review code. Nothing needs a server until the phone app does.