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← Garden Patch Home · Forms

• is_a::[[Form Type]]
• has_status::[[Seed Stage]]
• in_domain::[[Deep Context Architecture]]
• in_precinct::[[Garden Precinct]]

Scenario Form

Core question: “What might happen if these forces play out?”

A plausible narrative of how the future could unfold given specific drivers and conditions. Distinguished from a case (which records what happened) by being hypothetical and forward-looking. Distinguished from an inquiry (which asks what to investigate) by committing to a specific imagined trajectory.

Scenarios don’t predict — they prepare. Their value lies in spanning the possibility space, not picking the most likely future. Often come in sets (the Dator archetypes: growth, constraint, collapse, transformation). A scenario validated by events becomes a case; one that reveals recurring dynamics may crystallize into a pattern.

Structural Contract

Every scenario form requires:

• Drivers and forces — What conditions and trends drive this scenario.
• Narrative — How the forces interact and play out over time.
• Implications — What follows for the system or actor if this scenario unfolds.
• Signals — What to watch for that would confirm or disconfirm this trajectory.
• Sources — Data, trends, or analyses informing the scenario.
• Relations — Connections to other scenarios in the same set, patterns it might validate, cases it could become.

Naming heuristic: state the hypothetical trajectory or end state. Name what might happen, not the forces driving it. “Knowledge Graph as Digital Twin of Principal Reasoning” not “Delegation Scenario.”

Typical Predicates

• is_a::[[Scenario Form]]
• has_status::[[Seed Stage]] or [[Growing Stage]]
• in_domain::[[Domain Name]]
• set_with::[[Scenario Form]] — other scenarios in the same possibility set
• may_validate::[[Pattern Form]] — patterns this scenario could confirm
• driven_by::[[Model Form]] — models that inform this scenario’s drivers

Exemplars

• [[Thousand Gardens with Autonomous Trust]] — what happens when gardens become autonomous cryptographic objects that trust each other progressively
• [[Knowledge Graph as Digital Twin of Principal Reasoning]]↑ — what happens when gardens grow dense enough that agents shift from augmentation toward delegation

Category

Generative form — drives the creation of new knowledge by imagining futures.

Sources

Definition from [[Deep Context as an Architecture for Captured Reasoning]], lines 110-111.

Relations

• relates_to::[[Inquiry Form]] — inquiries investigate; scenarios imagine specific trajectories
• relates_to::[[Case Form]]↑ — validated scenarios become cases
• relates_to::[[Pattern Form]] — scenarios revealing recurring dynamics may crystallize into patterns
• relates_to::[[Model Form]] — models provide the structural context scenarios project forward

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