Positions
Philosophical statements on AI, judgement, and how domain expertise should shape the tools we build.
The User Has Somewhere Else to Be
Designing as if the user has nothing better to do is a quiet insult. Attention is a sliver of a crowded day — the demand-side twin of the parameterisation gap.
Is the User the Person?
"Knowing the user" is the parameterisation gap lodged in the founding verb of a discipline. When the parameterised thing is a person, declaring the reduction is not enough — refuse to accumulate it.
The Boundary and the Loop
What and why are yours. How is where AI lives. But the boundary is not a waterfall — the doing changes the knowing, and staying inside that loop is what AI use most often costs a student.
Density Is Not Mass
Koher's growth law: density is not mass. The number of nodes — tools, conversations, students, occasions — can grow without translating into more weight on any single relationship. The architecture is the mandala, not the tower.
Learning by Negotiation
A pedagogical position for design education. Encourage students to build with Claude Code, not around it. The negotiation between student and a more capable partner — what to keep, refuse, correct, redirect, and why — is the curriculum. SDC enacted by the learner, not contrary to it.
Open Source and Licensing
Three Koher tools are under MIT. Every tool released after 5 April 2026 is under AGPL-3.0. The split is a settled position with specific reasons. Why two licences, and what the split means for you.
Knowing Why
The industry is racing to make AI output better — more models, better orchestration, higher benchmarks. But better output and visible judgement are different things.
The Envelope of the Prompt
Why prompts have a ceiling — and why the interesting work begins there. A prompt is a request, not a mechanism. Knowing the difference is the first real design decision.
The Mathematical Proof of Hallucination
OpenAI proved that AI hallucination is mathematically inevitable. This is why Koher separates language from judgement — so hallucination happens only where it cannot cause harm.
The Parameterisation Gap
Why AI will always need an adapter between what it computes and what humans live. Not because AI is limited, but because human experience exceeds what can be parameterised.