What we are doing right now and what is done: WORKLOG.md. Where each milestone stands, what comes next, and the open work no milestone owns yet: ../MILESTONES.md. The plans, each with the changes made while it was built: M2 (Appendix C), M3 (section 15), M4, M5 (section 9). Reviews: reviews/. How we got here, the path we chose and why: JOURNEY.md (M1 and M2 in full, M3 to M5 in brief). The roadmap written at M1 for M2, kept as it was then: NEXT_STEPS.md. A progress dashboard as of 28 Sep 2026 (M1 done): visuals/progress.html.
For the history of the project, its decisions, and a recovery guide, see PROJECT_LOG.md. For the milestone 2 watcher research (what to watch and what not), see M2_WATCHLIST.md.
Visual explainers for the project. Each page is a single self-contained HTML
file in visuals/: open it in a browser straight from disk. They need an
internet connection only for the Google Fonts; everything else is inline.
The same pages are also published as private artifacts on claude.ai (links below), as they were when each was made. Since 2026-10-09 the files here also carry a status note at the top saying what has been built since; the published copies do not.
Each page shows the project as it was when the page was made: all four at M1, on 27 and 28 Sep 2026. Milestones 2 to 5 are built since; see ../MILESTONES.md for where things stand now.
| Page | What it shows | Real or concept |
|---|---|---|
| visuals/progress.html · online | Progress dashboard: how the code and tests grew commit by commit, the four review rounds and their findings, what sc does today, the VM’s state, and what is waiting before M2 |
Real as of 28 Sep 2026 (M1): numbers from git, the saved review results and the VM, checked by an independent fact check |
| visuals/system-map.html · online | Roadmap, how M1 was built commit by commit, the full architecture with playable scenarios, step-by-step snapshot and restore flows, and a working in-browser copy of sc |
M1 real; later milestones as designed at M1 (M2 to M5 are built since) |
| visuals/film-fstab-restore.html · online | Narrated film: open the laptop, snapshot /etc/fstab, a one-character typo, diff, restore, with an X-ray of the system calls, files and database rows |
Real run on this VM (2026-09-27 08:26), syscalls from strace |
| visuals/films-journey-after-without.html · online | Three narrated films: the whole journey M1 to M7; the finished product rescuing a broken boot; the same typo without SmartConfig | M1 real; M2 to M7 are mock-ups of the design; boot failure checked with systemd’s fstab generator |
sc command, id, hash and output line in the M1 scenes comes from real
runs on the development VM./data). Running
systemd-fstab-generator against that file on the VM shows data.mount
requiring the missing device, so boot waits 90 s and stops in emergency mode
(a desktop comes up to its login screen instead, the mount missing: M4’s
sign-off S3).
The root account is locked (passwd -S root shows L), as on every default
Ubuntu install. Ubuntu 24.04’s sulogin still opens a root shell in
emergency mode at the console (its sulogin-lockedpwd.patch, shown in the
M4 lab), but over SSH the machine may be gone, and nothing says what changed./) is different: the root filesystem is already
mounted by the initramfs, and the generated -.mount does not require the
device, so Ubuntu most likely still boots.The films use the browser’s built-in speech (speechSynthesis) for narration
and generate sound effects with the Web Audio API. Voices differ between
browsers; Chrome and Edge usually have the most natural ones. Both can be
switched off in the player.