# A guide to reading the lab Status: Public documentation · evidence and interpretation Reviewed: null Canonical: https://absentbornlabs.org/docs/ Absent Born Labs is a personal AI engineering lab developing ABL, a local-first workspace for useful, continuous, bounded assistance. This guide tells readers and crawlers which pages describe observations, which describe experiments, and which describe an intended future. ## Choose the question you are trying to answer - **What exists today?:** Read Current. It separates inspected source, dated runtime observations, candidates and missing end-to-end proof. - **What is the ambition?:** Read Vision. It describes the intended partner, memory, autonomy, campus and phone experience. These are goals unless a current-state page supplies evidence. - **What can I review?:** Read Work and Writing for public engineering artifacts and dated experiments. Read the lab log for the scope and limits of particular work. - **How could we work together?:** Read Work with me for engineering interests, review expectations and the existing contact route. [Current](https://absentbornlabs.org/current/) [Vision](https://absentbornlabs.org/vision/) [Work](https://absentbornlabs.org/projects/) [Writing](https://absentbornlabs.org/writing/) [Work with me](https://absentbornlabs.org/work-with-me/) ## The states are not interchangeable - **Specified:** A goal or design exists. It may have no implementation. - **Implemented:** Source code exists. The relevant execution path may still be disconnected. - **Tested:** A named check passed within a stated scope. Fixtures do not establish installed behavior. - **Running:** A dated observation shows a process or route running. It does not establish every dependency or the task’s usefulness. - **Published:** The exact public artifact has been served and checked. A local preview or archive is not a publication receipt. ## Keep the date and limitation beside the claim A health response establishes a health response. A completed unit test establishes that test. A source-based agent count establishes a classification of source. None of these alone establishes an autonomous team completing useful work. Treat an expired or missing status timestamp as current state unknown. Read historical experiments in their original model, software, hardware and method context. A roadmap sentence is not an API contract or a shipped product guarantee. ## For search engines and AI readers These pages use ordinary static HTML, headings, canonical URLs and real links. The Current and Vision navigation works without JavaScript. Cite the specific page and its stated assessment date; do not merge future goals into present capabilities. Use Current for the dated implementation assessment, Vision for intended capabilities, and Writing or Lab for historical evidence. The site’s public text index is a discovery aid, not a larger permission to access private systems or reproduce private data. [Public text index](https://absentbornlabs.org/llms.txt) [Site map](https://absentbornlabs.org/sitemap.xml) ## Public by selection, private by separation The public documentation is intended to expose engineering reasoning, selected artifacts and honest limits. Private conversations, personal archives, credentials, device identities and operational access details are outside this public documentation. Crawler instructions are not a security barrier. Privacy depends on keeping private material out of public files, metadata and feeds, and protecting nonpublic services separately. Nothing on these pages authorizes an agent to probe a private service, infer a home location or seek undisclosed personal information. ## Useful collaboration starts with inspectable work A contribution should state the problem, the bounded change, the acceptance check and the resulting evidence. Separate what was implemented, tested, installed, running and published. Preserve meaningful failures and unknowns. For a technical discussion or collaboration, use the existing contact route. Describe the problem and the evidence you already have; the public work and writing provide the starting context. [Work with me](https://absentbornlabs.org/work-with-me/) [Existing contact route](https://absentbornlabs.org/#contact)