Modframe — Structural Map of Federal Power

A structural and mechanical map of how Washington DC federal government power actually works.

14 sections. 230 modules. 17 deep, 130 first-draft, 83 scaffold.

What this maps

Section	Topic	Modules	Status
01	Electoral Power Structures	17	Deep (150–302 lines, inline citations)
02	Congressional Power Mechanics	25	First draft
03	Executive Branch Incentives	23	First draft
04	Revolving Door and Influence	23	First draft
05	Media Ecosystem and Information Architecture	19	First draft
06	Judicial Power Structure	20	First draft
07	State-Level Power Laboratories	20	First draft
08	Money and Industry Influence	17	Scaffold
09	Crisis Governance	15	Scaffold
10	Structural Incentives Behind Polarization	6	Scaffold
11	Accountability and Transparency Gaps	15	Scaffold
12	Foreign Influence and Global Intersections	10	Scaffold
13	Meta-Incentive Structures	10	Scaffold
14	Emerging and Overlooked Structures	10	Scaffold

Quality tiers:

• Deep — full actor analysis with inline statute citations, multi-paragraph process maps, specific court cases, datasets. Gold standard.
• First draft — all headings filled with real content and claim labels, but compressed actors, generic sources, ~58 lines. Needs deepening.
• Scaffold — empty template placeholders. Needs full build.

See docs/SECTION_AND_MODULE_MAP.md for the full module listing and future expansion roadmap (~380 financial system module ideas, 45 domain-applied sections).

What each module contains

Each built module includes:

• Summary — what the mechanism is and why it matters
• Mechanism in one sentence — the operational lever
• Actors and roles — who exercises power, tagged by type
• Process map — step-by-step how it works
• Where power concentrates — structural bottlenecks
• Common failure modes — how accountability breaks down
• Evidence tests — [Observed], [Inferred], [Hypothesis] with citations
• Suggested sources — statutes, cases, datasets, agency records
• Episode outline — 6-part structure for media activation

Repository structure

• topics/ — one folder per section, one subfolder per module
• docs/ — contribution standards, module template, content agent guide, prompts, schemas
• scripts/ — validators, index builders, queue generator

How to use this

Browse topics/ by section number. Each module folder contains README.md (metadata) and outline.md (the full explainer).

Principles

• Structural, not partisan — explain mechanics, incentives, and constraints
• Citation-forward — every factual claim tagged and traceable
• Composable — modules stand alone and combine for event coverage

License

Content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). See LICENSE.

Contributing

Start with docs/CONTRIBUTING.md and docs/MODULE_TEMPLATE.md.

Quality checks

python3 scripts/validate_metadata.py
python3 scripts/validate_completeness.py --warn-only
python3 scripts/build_indexes.py