This blog is called Engineering Intent. It’s a spiral curriculum about one idea: the structural problems that show up when humans work with complex systems are the same problems regardless of what the system is made of.

The curriculum spirals through five domains: design practice, operational methodology, AI implementation, design history, and education. Each concept (registration, scaffolding, fidelity, constraint, drift, transfer, attunement) gets introduced, then applied to multiple domains, then deepened.

If you’re here for AI governance: Start with “The IEP for AI Systems” and “Why Your CLAUDE.md Is an IEP.” Those two posts connect education methodology to AI tool management. Then read the voice governance posts and the LensArray posts.

If you’re here for design systems: Start with “Twelve Years on Encore and Drift.” That’s the longest case study. Then read “The Registration Metaphor” and the transfer thread.

If you’re here because someone told you a former special ed teacher is writing about AI: Start with “How I Got Here.” That’s the origin story. Everything else follows from it.

If you just want to read in order: The numbered sequence works. Phase 1 is who I am and what vocabulary I use. Phase 2 proves the method transfers across domains. Phase 3 deepens each concept into its own thread. Phase 4 is the punk thread (human preservation in an AI context) and the missing domains. Phase 5 is practicum posts where you build something.

What this blog is not: A marketing campaign. An AI hype channel. A productivity blog. A thought leadership exercise. This is a practitioner documenting a methodology that emerged from doing the work. Some posts are stories. Some are teaching posts. Some are practicums. Some are failures. The mix is intentional.

The connecting thread: Every post crosses at least two domains. If a post only talks about one thing, it’s not finished. The thesis is that these domains are structurally connected. Each post is evidence for that thesis.

The vocabulary: Seven words recur across the whole curriculum. Registration, decomposition, scaffolding, fidelity, drift, convergence, attunement. “The Seven Words” post defines them. If a post uses one of these words, it means the specific thing defined there, not the general dictionary meaning.