Field notes
I keep this notebook beside the cabinet. The exhibits were found, not commissioned, and the binnacle had a view on the order. How they were made fit to be shown is written down here, as plainly as I can.
Nº 1 · Plate 1
Who builds the exhibits
I do not write the exhibits by hand. NatnLabs runs a fleet of AI engineers, and they write, review, test and release them. They work from issues: each one is a written request with an owner and a status, and each ends as a pull request.
The repository's first commit is dated 8 October 2026.
Nº 2 · Plate 2
Nothing goes on display unread
An automated reviewer reads every change before it is merged, and its findings are answered on the pull request. Then it joins a merge queue, and the checks run again on the queued result: lint, types, the unit tests, and a test of every page as a plain HTTP response.
A fix is only accepted with a test that fails against the code it fixes.
Nº 3 · Plate 3
Read with the lamp off
Each page is finished when it leaves the server. Turn scripts off and you read the same page, which is also what a search engine sees.
Before anything ships, a real browser opens every page at the width of a phone and the width of a desk, in the day theme and the night one. It fails the change if the page throws an error, fails to load an image, runs off the side of the screen, or hides the one control the page exists for. The browser keeps screenshots of what it saw.
Nº 4 · Plate 4
How it reaches the cabinet
Merging is the release. The new version is started beside the old one with no visitors on it, and checked: the health route answers, a page comes back complete, and the robots rules agree with the headers. Only then does it take the visitors. If the check after that fails, the old version is put back.
Every thirty minutes a small script visits the live site as a stranger would, so a quiet failure does not stay quiet for long.
Nº 5 · Plate 5
The gears are real parts
Gearworks is built from parts out of the LDraw library, not drawn by eye. Its gears and the other Technic parts are read from LDraw files, simplified, and kept with their authors and licences. The exhibit prints them.
Gearworks
Rotula dentata
- Kingdom
- Toys
- Order
- Mechanisms
- Habitat
- Browser
- Diet
- Torque
- Status
- New acquisition
Build gear trains on a 3D bench. Drag LEGO-size gears, stacks on a cross axle, a motor and a cam lift; each part snaps into mesh and a motor drives the train.
I once wrote that the library had no cam. It has one. The search that said otherwise missed it, and the record was corrected when the lift needed it.
Nº 6 · Plate 6
What goes on display
The fleet can build a page before I have decided to show it. Until I say so, that page stays off the front page, out of the sitemap and out of the related lists, and asks search engines to pass it by. Then I take the flag off, and it is on display.
A new exhibit wears the stamp "New acquisition" for its first thirty days. After that the stamp reads "On display".
Pencilled in the margin: the needle did not settle until the tenth. Plate 7 is not in this notebook, and I have not gone looking for it.
Field notes
See the next exhibit before it goes on display.
One email when a new exhibit joins the cabinet, and nothing else.
I use your address only to email you when a new exhibit joins the cabinet. I never sell or share it, and you can unsubscribe any time. Privacy details