Thing/docs/thing2-target.md

Thing 2.0 target

Campaign thing2 in the eureka mind. This page holds the rationale and the design truths the rebuild produces. The typed thing2:target holds the invariants, the not-in-scope list and the canonical implementations; the rulings are in the mind and are cited here by id, never restated.

Why

Thing 1 handed layout to each host's own engine (CSS flexbox in the browser, Flutter widgets, Unity UI Toolkit's Yoga), so there were as many layout specs as renderers and the browser was the oracle in practice. Its contract grew domain kinds (inventory.grid, vn.stage, 41 kinds in the fixtures) that every lowerer in five languages had to implement. Parity was screenshots and gap ledgers, not geometry. Live state binding, pointer resolution and command results lived in each renderer, which is where the July failures came from (views that had to reload, failing commands, schema-rejected results). Evidence: docs/research/thing2-foundation-prior-art.md.

Operator, 2026-10-10: "More Things, fewer things."

• More Things: every surface is a composition of Things, published as Thing Script. An inventory grid, a VN stage or an Odin wall is a composition, not a contract kind.
• Fewer things: a small closed primitive set, one layout solver, one closed render-command list, thin backends, far fewer repos.

Shape

typed retained document (Thing Script, bound to typed CultMesh state)
  -> Thing core: Taffy layout, Parley text, focus, editing/IME state, AccessKit tree
  -> closed render-command list (+ accessibility tree)
  -> thin backends: draw, and bridge input/IME/accessibility to the platform

Rulings in force: thing:ruling:thing2-one-solver-taffy, thing:ruling:thing2-thing-owns-text, thing:ruling:wire-rename-freeze-fold, thing:ruling:operator-compat-rebuild, thing:ruling:hold-renames-for-thing2. Text, IME and accessibility evidence: docs/research/thing2-text-input-a11y-prior-art.md.

The consumer contract

Consumers (provider daemons, Verse daemons, CultLib runtimes, game hosts) never see Taffy, Parley or render commands. They depend on four things only:

1. Thing Script — the typed documents they publish: primitives plus shared compositions.
2. Binding — how a surface points at typed CultMesh state and receives live updates.
3. Commands — how input returns as a typed command with a schema-checked result.
4. Advertisement — how a provider announces itself to Odin.

Each waiting consumer migrates by one port cut onto this contract, which also carries its rename to gamecult.thing.* (rename table T and edge table E1-E7 in docs/thing-campaign.md). The consumer census sizes the floor of Thing Script; Thing is a general library, so capability a reasonable consumer would expect is not cut for lack of a current caller.

Open before any cut is mapped

• The identity, lifecycle and authority table for every persistent kind (model page in the prose map).
• The consumer census: what each waiting consumer publishes, binds and commands today.
• Where Thing 2.0's code lives (a fork, to be put with prior art).
• Which backend lands first for cutover: at minimum web, plus TUI for agents.