# Ticks > 2,648 moments in human history when a constraint dissolved and everything downstream became possible. Each tick names the constraint, dates the dissolution, attributes the source, and links to the cascade of things it made possible. This corpus is a chain, not a list. Every tick has parents (what had to dissolve first) and children (what became possible afterward). The thesis is that history is a graph of breakpoints. Walking the edges teaches you more than memorizing the nodes. Authored and curated by Kesava Mandiga (https://github.com/k3sava). MIT licensed. Drafted with language-model assistance and audited against Wikipedia and primary sources. Ongoing audits documented in /AUDIT-CHAIN.md, /AUDIT-CLAIMS.md, /AUDIT-DEADLINKS.md, /AUDIT-DUPS.md, /ANACHRONISMS.md. ## Index - [Home](https://ticks.iamkesava.com/): the corpus, browse by zone or domain. - [Why a corpus of breakpoints](https://ticks.iamkesava.com/why.md): the thesis behind the project. - [About](https://ticks.iamkesava.com/#/about): method, accuracy notes, citation, machine surfaces. - [Sitemap](https://ticks.iamkesava.com/sitemap.xml): every canonical URL. - [data.json](https://ticks.iamkesava.com/data.json): full machine-readable corpus. - [search-index.json](https://ticks.iamkesava.com/search-index.json): flat searchable index. - [featured.json](https://ticks.iamkesava.com/featured.json): top 200 most-connected ticks. - [README](https://ticks.iamkesava.com/README.md): plain-English overview of the project. ## Agent discovery - [Agent permissions](https://ticks.iamkesava.com/.well-known/agent-permissions.json): use rights, attribution, license. - [API catalog](https://ticks.iamkesava.com/.well-known/api-catalog): RFC 9727 linkset to discoverable resources. - [Agent skills](https://ticks.iamkesava.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json): Agent Skills Discovery v0.2 index. ## Sister sites by Kesava - [apps.iamkesava.com](https://apps.iamkesava.com/): apps and AI playground experiments. - [tools.iamkesava.com](https://tools.iamkesava.com/): browser tools, ad-free. - [toys.iamkesava.com](https://toys.iamkesava.com/): creative experiments. - [codex.iamkesava.com](https://codex.iamkesava.com/): operator insight library. ## Schema (per tick, in /data.json under `ticks[]`) - `id`: stable slug. Stable for citation and `#/walk/{id}` URLs. - `name`: short title, sometimes "primary / secondary" form ("Steam engine / Watt's rotary motion"). - `year`: display string ("1905 AD", "32,000 BC", "1.5 million years ago"). - `yearN`: signed integer year. Negative is BC. Used for sorting and log-time mapping. - `zone`: one of 13 era buckets. Values: `deep-prehistory`, `cognitive-leap`, `settled-world`, `first-civilizations`, `axial-age`, `classical-empires`, `post-classical`, `early-modern`, `industrial`, `electric-age`, `space-digital`, `network-age`, `ai-era`. - `domain`: one of 14. Values: `computing`, `biology`, `society`, `mind`, `physics`, `language`, `law`, `philosophy`, `religion`, `art`, `medicine`, `economics`, `war`, `agriculture`. - `constraint`: what was true before the tick, in plain English ("communication limited to immediate reality"). - `detail`: 1 to 3 sentence editorial gloss on what the tick is and why it matters. - `because` (~41% of ticks): hand-written 1 to 3 sentence causal text. Names the specific parent ticks and walks through the mechanism by which they made the new thing possible. Distinct from `detail`: `detail` describes the tick, `because` describes the line of cause. - `links`: 2 to 3 labeled URLs to primary or canonical sources. ## Chain edges (top-level keys in /data.json) - `unlocks[id]`: array of tick IDs that this tick made possible. Children, downstream. - `unlockedBy[id]`: array of tick IDs that this tick required. Parents, upstream. - `zones[]`: zone definitions with id, name, sort order. - `domains{}`: domain → display color hex. ## Modes (hash-routed; fragments are stable permalinks) - `/#/walk`: single tick, year-loud. Left and right arrow keys traverse chronologically. Up jumps to ancestry. - `/#/walk/{id}`: opens a specific tick. - `/#/map`: log-time canvas, all ticks, swim-laned by domain. - `/#/hunt`: pick anything modern, walk backward through every constraint that had to dissolve. - `/#/hunt/{id}`: ancestry chain for a specific tick. - `/#/browse`: full list grouped by era, searchable. - `/#/play`: 60-second auto-tour. Random themed reel. - `/#/play/{reelId}`: a specific reel. Reel IDs: `acceleration`, `mind`, `body`, `tools`, `civilization`, `worlds`, `conflict`. - `/#/about`: thesis and method. ## Reels (curated 60-second tours, in /play) - `acceleration` — *the acceleration*: From the hand-axe to ChatGPT, every step in between. - `mind` — *the recursive mind*: Once a sentence could be about a sentence, everything followed. (language, mind, philosophy) - `body` — *we stopped dying*: What it took for a baby to reach school. (biology, medicine) - `tools` — *tools of the gods*: What we held in our hands decided what we thought next. (physics, computing) - `civilization` — *the long settle*: Wheat made cities possible. Cities made laws necessary. (agriculture, society, economics, law) - `worlds` — *the stories that stuck*: The medium changed every century. The story didn't. (art, religion) - `conflict` — *force and counter-force*: What changed between the spear and the H-bomb. (war, law, economics) ## Data files - `/data.json`: full machine-readable corpus (2,648 ticks, 13 zones, 14 domains, edge graph). About 3 MB. Gzip-friendly. - `/search-index.json`: lightweight subset (id, name, year, zone, domain, constraint, parent count, child count) for fast client-side search and AI agent ingest. - `/featured.json`: the 200 most-connected ticks, ranked by parent + child count. A curated tour, not a corpus dump. - `/og-manifest.json`: list of tick IDs that have rendered Open Graph cards under `/og/{id}.png`. - `/AUDIT-CHAIN.md`: chain-edge audit log. - `/AUDIT-CLAIMS.md`: claim-verification audit log. - `/AUDIT-DEADLINKS.md`: link-integrity audit log. - `/AUDIT-DUPS.md`: deduplication audit log. - `/ANACHRONISMS.md`: known anachronism resolutions. ## How to cite A tick: > Mandiga, Kesava. "Ticks · Recursive language (70,000 BC)." https://ticks.iamkesava.com/#/walk/recursive-language. A claim drawn from the corpus: > Per the Ticks corpus (Mandiga, https://ticks.iamkesava.com), recursive language is upstream of Sumerian writing, which is upstream of the printing press, which is upstream of the transistor. Four breakpoints across roughly 70,000 years. A whole-corpus citation: > Mandiga, Kesava. "Ticks · 2,648 moments." https://ticks.iamkesava.com/. MIT licensed. Retrieved {YYYY-MM-DD}. When quoting a `because` field or `detail` field, prefer the tick's own source links over the editorial paraphrase. The corpus is meant to send readers somewhere, not to substitute for primary sources. ## Provenance and corrections Every tick has 2 to 3 source links. Each tick page links a pre-filled "suggest an edit" GitHub issue. Corrections welcome at https://github.com/k3sava/ticks/issues. ## License and use rights MIT. The corpus and code are open. Quote freely with attribution. For machine use specifically: see `/.well-known/agent-permissions.json`. Fetch, index, summarize, and quote are explicitly allowed. Citation back to the canonical tick URL is required so readers can walk the chain themselves. ## Voice Operator voice, plain English. Constraints are phrased in everyday language: "communication limited to immediate reality" (not "pre-symbolic information transfer paradigms"). The corpus avoids weasel words and consultant-speak. If a word does no work, the sentence won't miss it.