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PROVENANCE · SEMANTIC TRACE · 2026-07-12

How the cube was derived

A framework you can audit is worth more than one you must believe. This page replays the session that produced the cube — AI maturity: from an employee matrix to a cube of carriers — as it was recorded: four steps, each an unfold into questions and a fold into an invariant, closed by two statements with their stability bases.

Recorded as a semantic trace: a vault of frames, notes, trace steps, and folded statements. Each step is one Unfold + Fold operation — a space of questions is opened, then collapsed into an invariant that survives.

INTENTION · EXPLICIT SURFACE

Build a maturity model for employees' daily work with general-purpose AI assistants. Vertical: seven Harmogics dimensions — Truth, Deep, Connect, Service, Knowledge, Evolution, Responsibility — as questions about the employee's understanding. Horizontal: structures analogous to the maturity levels used to assess software companies for critical-sector readiness (CMM/CMMI).

Explicitly out of scope: enterprise-wide readiness (that matrix is wider) — this is a pointed matrix of individual readiness for daily tasks with AI as an assistant.

IMPLICIT ORIENTATION

Find a structure in which “can work with AI” stops being binary and becomes a diagnosable profile. Understand what qualitatively changes in a person's practice as maturity grows — and where the thresholds are that cannot be jumped.

FIG. 03 — FOUR STEPS, EACH UNFOLD + FOLD

  1. STEP 01

    FRAME 01

    Axis derivation

    UNFOLD ◇

    CMM unfolded: its origin (SEI, Carnegie Mellon, commissioned by the DoD to assess contractors for critical sectors), five levels, key mechanisms — evidence-based appraisal, non-skippable levels, staged versus continuous representations. In parallel: which of this means anything at the scale of one person with no processes and no audits?

    FOLD ◆

    Folded into the transfer invariant: a level is a mode of existence of a practice — luck → habit → articulated method → calibrated control → self-renewal. Organisational “documented” collapses into individual articulability. The continuous representation is chosen: a profile of seven values, never one number.

    RESULTThe horizontal axis is defined: five levels with individual semantics that keep CMM's non-skippability and observability.

  2. STEP 02

    FRAME 01

    Matrix fill

    UNFOLD ◇

    Each of the seven dimensions unfolded along the five-level axis: for every (dimension, level) pair — what observable behaviour separates it from its neighbors? Alongside, a question opened: is the vertical a flat list, or ordered?

    FOLD ◆

    35 cells folded into behavioural markers. The vertical folded into the lifecycle of one interaction: before the request / the request / after the response / a cross-cutting validation loop. The L2→L3 threshold confirmed itself in all seven dimensions: everywhere, the same transition — from “I do it but can't explain it” to “I can explain it and hand it over.”

    RESULTThe matrix is filled; the vertical gains a second order of structure (lifecycle phases); the articulation threshold is fixed as a cross-cutting invariant.

  3. STEP 03

    FRAME 02

    Carrier transfer

    UNFOLD ◇

    What changes in the seven dimensions when the scale shifts from employee to process to organisation? Candidates for the third axis weighed: unit size, hierarchy level, carrier of practice. Each dimension tested: does it survive the transplant?

    FOLD ◆

    Folded into a rule: the third axis is the carrier of knowledge — a head → a process artefact → an institution. The subject of the question substitutes (“does the employee understand” → “does the process define” → “does the organisation provide and govern”), the dimension is preserved. The five levels keep their nature, applied to the carrier's own practice. Both new faces filled — 35 + 35 cells.

    RESULTThe cube assembles: three faces sharing the D × L axes with different carriers. The O-face closes back onto original CMM semantics — the transfer made a full circle without deformation.

  4. STEP 04

    FRAME 02

    Cube formalisation

    UNFOLD ◇

    The 105-state space unfolded: notation candidates (words, coordinates, codes), projection types (by carrier, by level, by dimension), and the fate of cross-carrier links once the axes project as independent.

    FOLD ◆

    Folded into: the S·D·L word alphabet (position resolves letter collisions); three plane types with roles — S-faces as working matrices, L-planes as rollout target slices, D-planes as audit slices; and three connectivity laws lifted out of the geometry — the institutionalisation ladder of the L3 column, the gap law |ΔL| ≤ 1, and the two counter-flows of growth.

    RESULTThe cube gains a language: any state is a three-symbol word, a profile is a vector of 21 words, and cross-carrier links are explicit laws — not hidden geometry.

FIG. 04 — WHAT SURVIVED THE FOLDS

STATEMENT · FRAME 01 — Level as mode of existence
An employee's maturity in working with AI is not a count of skills but the mode of existence of their practice: luck → habit → articulated method → calibrated control → self-renewal. The central threshold is L2→L3, articulability: below it, practice lives only in its carrier and dies with their departure or a tool change; above it, practice becomes transferable, verifiable, and scalable. Assessment is meaningful only as a continuous profile of seven values — folding it into one number destroys its diagnostic value.

STABILITY BASISThe transition “can't explain → can explain and hand over” reproduced independently in all seven dimensions during the fill — it was not built into the axis. Non-skippability is inherited from CMM, where decades of appraisal practice confirm it empirically.

STATEMENT · FRAME 02 — The cube and its laws
An organisation's maturity in working with AI is not one number and not one matrix — it is a configuration of the 7 × 5 × 3 cube, named in words of the S·D·L alphabet. The articulation threshold L2→L3 exists on every carrier in its own aggregate state — “I can explain” → “written into the process” → “anchored as a norm” — and the L3 column forms the institutionalisation ladder: knowledge's path from a head into an institution. Configurations are stable when adjacent carriers differ by at most one level; a larger gap breeds either shadow practice (bottom-heavy) or paper maturity (top-heavy). Growth is managed as two counter-flows: institutionalisation from below and enablement from above.

STABILITY BASISThe L2→L3 threshold reproduced independently in all 21 rows of the cube without being designed in. The gap pathologies correspond to empirically known phenomena — shadow IT, paper compliance in CMM practice. The five levels of the O-face closed back onto original CMM: the transfer made a full circle without deformation.

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