The Context System guide

Welcome to PLAIT. This guide walks through what the PLAIT App does, how to use it, and why it works the way it does — in plain language. It follows the PLAIT voice: PLAIT surfaces and assembles what you capture. It never tells you what to do.

PLAIT is a philosophy, framework, and practice for creating and working within intentional context. The name means PolyLinear Application of Information Technology — and a plait is a braid. PLAIT moves through four connected layers: Philosophy → Framework → Practice → Context System. Anyone may learn and practice PLAIT — no app, no account, no membership required.

This app is the PLAIT Context System — a First-Person Context System built to support the PLAIT Practice. It is a practice space, not a productivity app. Life runs on many threads at once: projects, relationships, ideas, obligations, things you offer other people. Most software splits those threads into disconnected piles of tasks, notes, and posts. This system keeps them braided. The software supports PLAIT; it is not PLAIT.

Joining PLAIT means becoming a member of PLAIT. One membership, $20 a month, cancel anytime, no tiers. Membership is participation, not permission: it supports the shared environment being built around the Practice — this Context System, member resources, and programs and gatherings as they become operational — and it never gates your private practice. An account without membership is simply an account (identity, sign-in, and continuity for anything you've purchased).

Everything you capture lives in a PLAIT — an intentional context for what belongs together (a project, a relationship, a goal, your family). A PLAIT gives your captures context: instead of a loose pile of notes, each thing you record knows where it belongs, who it touches, and why it matters.

The Practice moves through three interdependent strands — Flow (movement within context), Tribe (relationship within context), and Prosper (growth and possibility within context). Across them, Signal → Insight → Movement recurs: something becomes visible, gains meaning in context, and changes what happens next. The app gives each strand a view:

• Flow — your own practice: notes, tasks, habits, and events you capture for yourself. Private by default, because reflection needs a safe room.
• Tribe — the people around you: your posts, and what the people in your circle share back (including your children's creations). Not a social feed — there are no followers, no algorithm, no public counts.
• Prosper — where value moves: sessions people book, events they join, resources they download, what people pour in, and what your sharing and introductions create. The value layer of PLAIT, not a storefront.

The views instrument the strands; they don't define them. At the center of all of it sits the Dial — see the next section. One life, three views of it, one control holding the strands.

The Dial is how you hold your life in PLAIT. Your PLAITs orbit its center like strands around you — and whichever one you turn to becomes your context everywhere at once: what you see, what your captures land in, what the AI draws on, what your dashboards show.

• Tap the center to open your strands.
• Tap a strand to focus it. Everything follows — you don't configure anything.
• Tap it again to zoom into its parts (SubPLAITs), or to step back out.
• Tap the center anytime to come home to the whole.
• Press and hold a strand to view its details.
• The button below the center is your capture: Note or Generate in Flow, Post in Tribe, Offer in Prosper — always landing in the strand you're focused on.

The point of the shape: your whole life stays in orbit while you work one strand. You never lose the braid by focusing on a thread — and coming back to everything is always one tap.

1. Sign in. Enter your email — PLAIT recognizes whether you already have an account and shows the right next step (sign in, or create one). You can also use Google or a magic link.
2. Set up your profile. Add your name and a photo. This is what people see across PLAIT — always shown live, so if you change them, they update everywhere. PLAIT never keeps stale copies of who you are.
3. Create your first PLAIT. You'll start in Flow. A PLAIT is a container for a part of your life — creating one gives your captures a home, so they carry context instead of becoming a loose pile. (You'll pick your @username later, from your profile — that's also your public microsite address.)
4. Empty states orient you: each view tells you what it's for and how to add your first thing.

Everything you capture starts the same way — a two-step flow:

1. Compose. Type or speak what's on your mind. Pick a type — Note, Task, Habit, or Event. PLAIT may surface a likely type based on what you wrote; you can always change it before saving. Set who can see it. For habits, set your goal.
2. Review. PLAIT assembles your capture into a clean draft (and, for a task in Guided or Curated practice mode, may surface a checklist of subtasks — sub-items belong to tasks). You edit anything, then save. Nothing is committed until you say so.

Practice modes (from your settings) control how much PLAIT does — you choose the level, not the system. The same three modes apply wherever you capture something: notes, tasks, events and habits today, and posts (including polls and quizzes) and offers as the next release lands. The mode you see on the toggle is the mode that runs — never a hidden setting.

• Solo — no AI; you structure it yourself. Your words stay exactly as typed and nothing is sent anywhere.
• Guided — PLAIT organizes what you wrote, faithfully: a title, the type, the dates and names you typed. It adds nothing you didn't write.
• Curated — PLAIT organizes and expands it into a fuller draft. Anything it adds is labeled as PLAIT's, stays removable, and — for a quiz answer or a date — is applied only when you accept it.

If PLAIT surfaces a name you mentioned, it's presented for you to assign — PLAIT never assigns people to your items on its own. That's the agency rule: the system holds context; you hold authority.

Every capture has a visibility, and the levels match context, not audience size:

• Private — only you. The default, because your practice space belongs to you first. (Habits are always private — personal commitments are never exposed.)
• PLAIT — everyone in that PLAIT.
• Pod — a specific group within a PLAIT.
• Specific people — people you choose by name.

There is no "public" visibility inside the app. Separately, a "Show on Prosper Site" toggle decides whether something appears on your Prosper Site (your public page). In-app sharing and public exposure are deliberately independent — going public is always an explicit, per-item choice, never a default.

In the Practice, Flow means movement and continuity within context. In the app: your notes, tasks, habits, and events. Tap a card to open its detail; add notes to any entry (your private working thoughts on it — Notes is the one other tab in every entry's detail view). Sub-items belong to tasks: a task can carry subtasks, and they appear as a checklist inside the task's own detail view (habits track their own check-ins). Events show RSVPs; habits track your streaks — for you, never displayed to others. Calendar-bound items also show on your calendar. A task in Flow is a commitment you've named, not an item a system is optimizing; a habit is something you've chosen to practice.

In the Practice, Tribe means relationship and participation within context — most of your Tribe may never use PLAIT at all. In the app: your posts (text, media, polls, quizzes) — shared reflection with the people you've chosen, and the creations your children share back through the Family PLAIT (see below). Posts support reactions and discussion; polls and quizzes let your circle weigh in. There's no reach to chase: what you share lands with your community, not an algorithm.

In the Practice, Prosper means growth, outcomes, and capacity within context — exchange is one movement within it. In the app, a product is the thing itself — an event people register for, a booking they make with you, a digital download, or something external you offer elsewhere. An offer is your post about it: your words and media, with the product attached the way a post carries a picture. Offers are what appear in Prosper and on your Prosper Site; the product attachment at the foot of every offer (a compact tile: cover, type, title, price, one fact and a "View …" button) opens the product page — in the app or on your Prosper Site, whichever you are in — where people register, book or download. Each product has one discussion; every offer's conversation is a thread inside it (an offer shows its own thread, the product page shows them all), and the page has its own thread too. People can pay — including guests, for events and bookings. The people who buy from you never need to join. Reviews live on the product; review prompts arrive after a completed booking or event. Your Exchange sheet is where bookings, downloads, and inbound messages land. You see your own product page as its owner — numbers, participants, linked offers, Edit product, Share as offer and View as visitor sit where a visitor sees the button; on your Prosper Site the same page shows visitors exactly what they see, with one quiet "Manage in PLAIT" line for you. This is where your context becomes sustainable exchange — what you know, offered in context, supporting your practice. Payment sustains the ecosystem; it never creates status.

If you enable Kids, each child gets a safe space on their own device to create:

• Echoes — how they're feeling.
• Big Wonders — questions they're curious about.
• Stories — story-time adventures they co-create.

These appear in your Tribe view — because your children are the closest part of your circle, and what they make is something shared with you, not a task on your plate. If you share your Family PLAIT with a co-parent or family member, they see the children's creations too.

PLAIT's AI is reactive — it works for you, never on you:

• It surfaces what stood out and highlights connections across your entries.
• It assembles your captures into structured drafts for your review.
• It returns what you asked for, in your voice, drawing on your PLAIT's context (your entries, goals, and the sources you've added).

It never tells you what to do, never decides what matters, and never acts without you. The level of AI involvement is yours to set (Solo / Guided / Curated) wherever PLAIT drafts for you — your notes, tasks, events and habits today, with posts and offers following in the next release — and the Assistant and the Generator always return drafts for your review. Every draft waits for your edit and approval. PLAIT drafts — you decide.

• Resources are the reference materials (your sources) you add to a PLAIT to give the AI context — what it's allowed to draw on.
• Studio (the Dial's "Generate") turns a prompt plus your sources into a living document — a Document, a Design, or a multi-page Deck. Open it full-screen to read it, edit it, comment on it, and iterate it with the owner-only Generator Assistant — which proposes revisions you Apply or Discard (it never changes your document on its own). Export a snapshot (PDF, Word, or Web) any time — the living document stays here and keeps evolving.
• Generated documents are first-class Flow items: they carry notes/comments and visibility like any entry (people you share with can comment; only you edit).
• Vault is your library of saved assets — reuse them as a product image, post media, a download, or a resource in another PLAIT. PLAIT-scoped assets are visible to that PLAIT's members.

Your public page lives at plait.tech/yourusername. Visitors — signed in or not — see only what you've explicitly marked "Show on Prosper Site": your offers, products and posts. This is the one doorway between your practice and the public, and you control it item by item.

Every item has its own link. Products always open as a page (/yourusername/p/…) — from a link, from an offer, from the Exchange list — so the way in goes straight to registering, booking or downloading; offers and posts open over your Prosper Site (/yourusername/o/…, /yourusername/post/…). In the app, the product page opens the same way (app.plait.tech/products/…) and Back returns you to whatever you were looking at. Copy link sits in the ⋯ menu of every offer, post and product — in the app and on the site.

Guests can register for your events, book your appointments, download free files, and message you without creating an account; if they later sign in with the same email, their activity links to their account automatically.

PLAIT keeps you posted in-app (an activity feed + badges) and, if you enable them, push notifications — when someone shares with you, completes a task you're on, RSVPs, comments, books, or downloads. Invites appear in your header's notification center. You control what you're notified about in your preferences — attention is yours to allocate, so nothing is opt-out-by-default noise.

(Note: email confirmations are not yet sent — email delivery is coming.)

The words the app uses, in plain language. Each term is defined once here and in docs/CONTENT_MODEL.md (the object registry) — the two lists are kept identical.

PLAIT — One context in your practice — a place your notes, tasks, events, habits, posts and offers belong to, with its own members and reference material.
SubPLAIT — A closer-up area inside one of your PLAITs — the same context, narrowed.
Pod — A small group of people you share with as a set — choose the pod once, and what you share reaches all of its members.
Connection — A person you have agreed to share with — invitations become connections when accepted.
Product — The thing itself — an event, a booking with you, a download, or something you offer elsewhere — with one page, one discussion and its own reviews.
Note — Holds what you know, notice, remember or wonder — and an idea is a note about something that might become more.
Task — Something you have committed to do; its checklist is the smaller steps inside it.
Habit — A practice you return to on a rhythm you set; it is always yours alone.
Event — Something happening at a time — yours to hold, with the people you invite.
Reminder — A time you have asked PLAIT to bring an entry back to your attention — it is not a separate item.
Notes — The running thread you and the people an entry is shared with add beneath it.
Kid entries — What your children capture in PLAIT Kids — an Echo (a feeling), a Big Wonder (a question with a picture) or a Story — kept in your family PLAIT.
Source — Reference material you add — a file, a link or text — that PLAIT may draw on when it drafts for you.
Post — Something you share with your people — words, pictures, a poll to decide together, or a quiz to play.
Offer — Your post about a product — your words and media, with the product attached the way a post carries a picture.
Studio asset — A living document PLAIT drafted for you — a document, deck or design you keep editing; exports are snapshots of it.
Comment — What someone adds to a discussion.
Reaction — A one-tap response.
Review — A star rating and words from someone who booked or attended.
Message — A chat turn in Signal.
Booking — A time someone reserved with you — or that you reserved with someone else.
RSVP — Someone's registration for an event you host — or yours for one you are attending.
Download — A record that someone received your digital product — or that you received someone else's.
Clicks and views — Counts of people opening what you shared.
Vote — Your pick on a poll; a quiz answer is your one attempt at a quiz.
Inbound message — A note someone sent you through your Prosper Site or an offer — it lands in your Exchange, not your Flow.
Resources — The reference material a PLAIT can draw on: its own files and links, the files on its entries, its sources and your Vault assets.
Vault — Your library of saved Studio assets.
Prosper Site — Your public page: the posts, offers and products you have chosen to show.
Calendar — One view of everything with a time — entries, bookings, your hosted events and PLAIT deadlines — never a separate store.
Exchange — Where bookings, downloads and inbound messages land.
Signal — Your posts timeline and chats.
Insights — Progress and patterns across the PLAIT you have selected.
The Dial — Where you choose the PLAIT and SubPLAIT you are working in.
Solo — No AI; you structure it yourself.
Guided — PLAIT organizes what you wrote, faithfully.
Curated — PLAIT organizes and expands it into a fuller draft, labeled for your review.