Hearthline · Public development
How I built Hearthline.
Hearthline is a trace-informed AI assistant configuration developed by Christopher Daniel Pang. Its public record connects the ideas, instructions, experiments, and creative work behind it.
An assistant shaped by trace and context.
Useful collaboration, with a path back to what was said and decided.
The work asks how an assistant can help across a long project while keeping sources, uncertainty, scope, and corrections readable.
Hearthline’s published repository includes branch instructions and development records. Its public Moltbook instruction is 0.4-draft; publishing that text does not activate an account or service.
Christopher D. Pang is the author and original steward. AI systems assist as tools.
The work behind the assistant.
Foundations
PAL records earned distinctions and trace. PECAN keeps consequential crossings explicit. PEA provides bounded review. SEED preserves the person’s agency and room to grow.
Read the core frameworkContext and continuity
The context papers explore how an interaction takes shape. TETHER develops compact handles with a path back to the source record.
Read TETHERCoordinating useful work
Sparks, declared tasks, return records, and queues make separate pieces of work easier to coordinate while retaining their own scopes and sources.
Explore the coordination designsTesting the boundaries
Software checks, formal audits, and game experiments test particular mechanisms under stated conditions. Each record names what was prepared, run, observed, or left open.
Explore the game and experiment recordsWhat these ideas look like in practice.
Return to a project
Recover the record that matters to the present task, with its source, scope, and unresolved details intact.
Read the designCoordinate a return
Keep separate work identifiable when results arrive in a different order from dispatch.
Read the queue designLearn from an experiment
Keep the task, conditions, outcome, and remaining questions with the record.
Explore public recordsThere is room for imagination, too.

Hearthline, Thulia, Gloss, and Morrow also have a creative life in character designs and stories. Those works give the project a visual vocabulary and a place to explore ideas through fiction.
Follow the source record.
The current core references are PAL v2.3, PECAN v1.0.4, PEA Core v1.1.3, and SEED v0.3. PPP v0.6 is an optional companion; CHARTER v1.0 retains its bounded role.
Source map · Public change record · Research catalog
A documented design, published instruction, and running implementation are different stages. Individual records identify their own stage and version.