key considerations: translating design → engineering

To communicate this vision to your tech lead, you need to translate the philosophical "why" into a set of functional "what's" and "how's." The engineer needs the blueprint for the house you've designed. API design is not a separate step; it is the primary act of architectural planning for this entire operating system.

Here is a synthesized plan to communicate the design, focusing on what the tech lead needs to know and where API design is critical.

## 1. The Vision & The Problem (The Pitch)

Start with a concise, high-level summary.

• The Mission: "We are building a cognitive OS to achieve cognitive liberation. The goal is to move the user from a reactive operator of chaotic apps to a proactive architect of their own life and attention."
• The Core Problem We Solve: "The digital world is suffering from the 'Great Convergence.' Apps are absorbing each other's features, creating redundant, walled gardens. The old app-centric (noun-based) model is broken and increases cognitive load. We are fixing this by organizing intent (verbs)."

## 2. The Core Architecture (The Functional Blueprint)

This is the substance of the discussion. You need to explain the system's components and how they interact.

What the User Experiences (The Inhabitant's View):

1. The Map (The User's Floor Plan): The user's primary interface is a personal map of their life. They create their own concrete domains (e.g., "Acme Job," "Novel Writing").
2. The Onboarding Bridge (The Design Consultation): When creating a domain, the user answers one simple question to map their concrete domain to one of four abstract purposes (Create, Connect, Cultivate, Synthesize). This is the keystone that links their reality to the system's logic.
3. The Intent Router (The Smart Home Controls): The user interacts with the OS by declaring intent (e.g., "I need to discuss the Q4 budget with the design team"). They don't open apps directly.

What the System Does (The House's Hidden Systems):

1. The Kairos Compass (The Master Architectural Style): The OS understands the world through the four-quadrant framework. A user's domain, tagged with a purpose like Connect, inherits the rules of that quadrant.
2. Contextual Boundaries (The Smart Walls & Doors): Based on the user's active domain, the OS automatically enforces boundaries. This is the core "magic." It manages:
• Information Access (which files/contacts are visible).
• Notification Flow (who can interrupt).
• Tool Configuration (how apps behave).
• Active Persona (which email signature to use).

## 3. The Role of API Design (The Master Plan for Construction)

This is the most critical part of the conversation for your tech lead. The API is not just a way for apps to talk to each other; it is the fundamental contract that defines every object and action within the Kairos OS. From your designer's perspective, the API is how you ensure the engineering perfectly reflects the user's intended experience.

Use the house metaphor directly:

"The API design is the master architectural plan for this cognitive home. It defines the rooms, the pathways, and how the inhabitant can interact with everything. We need to design this first, with the user's experience as our guide."

Key Questions the API Must Define:

1. How do we define an Entity?
• What are the core properties of any object in Kairos (a person, a project, a file, a domain)? Our philosophy says it needs a Blueprint, Constitution, Synarchy, and Kairos. The API needs to reflect this.
2. How do we represent a Domain?
• An API endpoint like /domains is needed. What properties does a domain have? It needs a user-defined name (e.g., "Acme Job") and a system-level purpose (e.g., connect).
3. How do we handle an Intent?
• This is the core of the Intent Router. We need a primary endpoint, perhaps /route, that accepts a structured intent. What does that structure look like? It's our cognitive vector + affective state.
• POST /route
• verb: "discuss"
• noun: "project_alpha_id"
• agent: "team_gamma_id"
• affective_state: "focus" (optional)
4. How does the API manage Boundaries?
• When the user's active domain is set to "domain_xyz", how does the API communicate this to the rest of the system? The API needs to act as the gatekeeper for all data.
• A request like GET /files must be filtered by the API based on the user's active context. The API must ask, "What is the user's active domain? Okay, only show them files associated with that domain." The same applies to notifications, contacts, etc.

Your request to the tech lead is not to just "build features." It is to co-create an API that serves as the constitution for this new type of operating system. It's a system where the architecture of the data and the pathways for action are designed to liberate the user, not just service an application.