# Seasonal Intelligence — project overview

*Restructured July 2026. What was one fourteen-chapter book is now two books and six essays, with every claim sorted by how much evidence it can carry.*

## What changed, and why

The original project bundled four books that shared a theory but not a reader: a media critique, a seasonal-living book, a leadership manual, and a nature/health book. It also had its priorities inverted — the **three-tier relevance model** is the original idea here, and it sat at chapter 3 of 14, while the **seasonal frame**, the least-evidenced part and the most crowded shelf in the category, got the title and the spine.

The restructure does three things:

1. **Promotes the relevance model to its own book** and gives it the full argument.
2. **Reframes the seasonal material** as cultural history plus practical design rather than neuroscience — because the neuroscience isn't there, and the design argument doesn't need it.
3. **Sorts every claim into evidence tiers** that govern the voice each chapter may be written in.

## Files

**Start here**

- **`PORTFOLIO.md`** — the split: two books, six essays, what was cut and why, and the sequence to work in.
- **`EVIDENCE.md`** — every load-bearing claim sorted into four tiers, with sources. **This file governs what register each chapter can be written in.** It also identifies an internal contradiction in the original theory that has to be resolved before drafting.

**The books**

- **`BOOK_ONE_CHAPTERS.md`** — *A Day's Walk*, chapter by chapter. **The drafting document.** The eight-day walk spine, opening scene and numbered argument beats for all 14 units, and the argument ledger tracking every claim from where it's raised to where it's paid off.
- **`CRAFT.md`** — how the book is written: lyric/landscape register, scene-before-claim, the recurring objects, and the rule that keeps Part IV from turning into self-help. **Governs voice the way `EVIDENCE.md` governs claims.**
- **`BOOK_ONE_OUTLINE.md`** — the strategic rationale behind Book One's shape. Superseded by `BOOK_ONE_CHAPTERS.md` for drafting.
- **`BOOK_TWO_OUTLINE.md`** — *Seasonal Intelligence*. 10 chapters, reframed as design rather than brain states. Chapter beats to come once Book One's voice is settled.

**The theory**

- **`THEORY.md`** — revised and renamed *The Relevance Theory*. Narrowed to what the evidence supports, with the cut material and the reasons listed at the end.

**Doing the walk**

- **`FIELD_BRIEF.md`** — what each chapter needs from the ground, the nightly capture protocol, the chapter-6 phone protocol, what not to do on the trail, and a map-verification checklist. Carry this.
- **`drafts/`** — prologue, chapter 3, chapter 5. Register tests; the specifics are placeholders.

**Archive**

- `archive/THEORY_v1.md` and `archive/BOOK_OUTLINE_v1.md` — the originals, unchanged. Nothing has been lost; check here before assuming something was deleted.

## The four evidence tiers

| Tier | Meaning | How to write it |
|---|---|---|
| **A** | Well-supported, multiple sources | State it, cite it, move on |
| **B** | Contested — real dispute in the literature | Present both sides *in the text* |
| **C** | Plausible, untested — your hypothesis | Mark as hypothesis, in the text, every time |
| **D** | Speculative or personal | Memoir or metaphor; cannot carry an argument |

The failure mode this whole restructure exists to prevent is a Tier C chapter written in a Tier A voice. Most of Part II of Book One — the original contribution — is Tier C. Saying so plainly is what makes the rest believable.

## Status

- Theory: revised, narrowed, evidence-checked
- Book One: outlined, unwritten
- Book Two: outlined, unwritten, needs a year of case-study collection first
- Essays: outlined, unwritten
- Manuscript: **still zero words** — and this is now the only thing that matters

## Next step

**Write essay 1, "Stress Hunger," this weekend.** Roughly 2,000 words on being ravenous after a day at a desk and barely hungry after four days walking. It's the shortest distance between you and a finished piece, it's pure voice, and it's the lowest-stakes way to find out how you write at length.

Everything in these files is a guess until there are sentences. The outline will be rearranged by the drafting regardless — that's what drafting is for. The only irreversible mistake available right now is spending another twelve months on structure.