probframe

A cross-domain catalogue of problem-solving patterns — how actors, institutions, organisms, and systems solve problems, concentrate advantage, and fail.

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What this is

Probframe documents recurring structural patterns that appear across domains: politics, biology, law, economics, military strategy, ecology, organizational behavior, and elsewhere. Each entry describes one pattern — how it operates, who deploys it and against what, where it concentrates leverage, under what conditions it works or breaks down, and where it has been observed in practice.

The goal is pattern recognition that travels. The same structural logic that describes how a congressional committee controls the legislative agenda also describes how a keystone species controls an ecosystem and how a platform company controls developer access. Probframe makes those structural equivalences explicit and traceable.

Entries are descriptive and conditionally prescriptive: they document how patterns operate and the conditions under which they have been observed to succeed or fail. They do not recommend strategies or evaluate whether outcomes are good or bad.

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Relationship to Modframe

Probframe is an independent project with a documented relationship to Modframe, a structural map of US federal power mechanics.

Modframe modules appear in probframe entries as instantiations — specific federal-power examples that ground abstract pattern claims in documented, cited evidence. Every probframe entry that has a plausible federal power instantiation must link to the relevant Modframe module IDs before it can advance to sourced status.

The relationship is reference, not inclusion. Probframe abstracts from Modframe; it does not duplicate it.

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Structure

probframe/
  patterns/
    01_Adversarial_Patterns/
      001_Direct_Displacement/
        README.md       ← status, tags, cross-reference metadata
        outline.md      ← full pattern content
        figures/        ← optional visuals
    02_Cooperative_and_Coalition_Patterns/
    ...
  docs/
    CONTENT_AGENT.md            ← authoring guide (read this first)
    SECTION_AND_PATTERN_MAP.md  ← full taxonomy with all 76 patterns
    GOVERNANCE.md               ← lifecycle rules and anti-capture measures
    STYLEGUIDE.md               ← voice, claim labels, neutrality constraints
    CITATIONS.md                ← citation format and source hierarchy
    GLOSSARY.md                 ← shared vocabulary
    MODULE_TEMPLATE.md          ← canonical module structure
    prompts/
      draft_module.md           ← initial content draft prompt
      citation_pass.md          ← citation review and enrichment prompt
      metadata_pass.md          ← structured metadata normalization prompt
      linking_pass.md           ← cross-reference link suggestion prompt
      neutrality_pass.md        ← tone and framing review (human)
      final_polish.md           ← prose quality pass (human)
    schemas/
      readme_schema.json        ← README metadata schema
      outline_schema.json       ← outline completeness schema
    examples/                   ← golden reference modules
  scripts/
    generate_queue.py           ← next module to work on
    validate_completeness.py    ← outline completeness check
    validate_metadata.py        ← README metadata quality check
    build_indexes.py            ← generate actor/domain/pattern indexes

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11 sections, 76 patterns

Section	Patterns	Primary relationship structure
01 Adversarial	001–008	Zero-sum with an active opponent
02 Cooperative and Coalition	009–015	Positive-sum requiring coordination
03 Procedural and Sequencing	016–023	Path-dependent, rule-governed, timing-sensitive
04 Information and Signaling	024–030	Asymmetric information, revelation, concealment
05 Constraint and Boundary	031–037	Operating within, around, or reshaping constraints
06 Resource and Positioning	038–044	Scarcity, leverage, positional advantage
07 Hierarchical and Delegative	045–051	Principal-agent, authority, accountability gaps
08 Evolutionary and Iterative	052–058	Selection, variation, feedback loops
09 Crisis and Exception	059–064	Urgency, emergency authority, process suspension
10 Analogical and Transfer	065–069	Cross-domain pattern recognition and translation
11 Meta-Strategies	070–076	Legitimacy, rule-setting, second-order effects

Sections are fuzzy navigation clusters. The cross-reference graph handles the actual relational structure between entries — a pattern lives in the section that best describes its primary relationship structure, not every section it touches.

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Module anatomy

Each pattern entry has two files:

README.md — machine-readable metadata:

• Status in the lifecycle (empty → scaffolded → draft → sourced → reviewed → published)
• Cross-reference links: Related patterns, Often combined with, Degrades into, Modframe instances
• Domains, actors, tags

outline.md — the pattern content, structured around 9 required headings:

1. Actors and deployment context
2. Operational sequence
3. Where leverage concentrates
4. Conditions of applicability — enabling and disabling conditions
5. Common failure modes
6. What evidence would prove/disprove key claims
7. Instantiations — cross-domain documented examples
8. Suggested sources
9. Analysis outline (6 parts)

The Conditions of applicability section is probframe's light prescriptive layer. It documents the structural conditions under which a pattern has been observed to operate or fail — framed as tendencies, not recommendations, with claim labels required.

The Degrades into cross-reference field maps what a pattern becomes when its enabling conditions fail. Together with Related patterns and Often combined with, it turns the catalogue into a navigable knowledge graph rather than a flat list.

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Claim types

Every factual assertion carries one of three labels:

Label	When to use
[Observed]	Documented in a primary or high-quality secondary source
[Inferred]	Follows logically from observed facts; reasoning stated
[Hypothesis]	Plausible but unverified; confirming evidence described

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Current status

All 76 patterns are scaffolded as stubs. No modules have reached draft status yet.

Priority build queue:

#	Pattern	Reason
039	Chokepoint Control	Documented across all Modframe sections; high cross-domain clarity
047	Oversight Capture	Deep Modframe grounding in Sections 03, 04, 11
054	Ratchet Mechanisms	Documented in emergency powers, regulatory, and judicial modules
021	Process Capture and Rule-Setting	Grounded in Modframe Sections 02, 03, 06
010	Minimum Winning Coalition	Strong academic sourcing (Riker); Modframe Sections 01, 02

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Contributing

See docs/CONTENT_AGENT.md for the full authoring guide.

The short version:

1. Run python3 scripts/generate_queue.py --next 1 to find your next module
2. Write a pattern brief before drafting (4–6 sentences: mechanism, actors, cross-domain examples, relevant sources, Modframe links)
3. Use docs/prompts/draft_module.md to generate the initial outline
4. Run the citation pass, metadata pass, and linking pass in order
5. Stop at sourced — reviewed and published require human approval

Claim label rules and citation format: docs/STYLEGUIDE.md and docs/CITATIONS.md

Lifecycle and governance: docs/GOVERNANCE.md

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Design principles

Pattern-first, domain-second. The structural logic comes first; the domain examples are grounding evidence, not the primary subject.

Conditions over prescriptions. Instead of "use this pattern when X," entries document "this pattern is observed in contexts where X." The conditions are citable claims, not advice.

Failure modes are first-class. The Degrades into field and failure modes section treat pattern breakdown as analytically equal to pattern operation. Most of the interesting insight lives at the seams where patterns fail.

Sections are entry points, not categories. The cross-reference graph is the real structure of the catalogue. Sections exist for navigation; the graph captures the actual relationships between patterns.

Modframe as empirical ground truth. Every pattern claim that applies to federal power mechanics should be traceable to a specific Modframe module. This keeps abstraction honest.

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License

CC BY 4.0 — see LICENSE.