Entry point to everything. Research question: Where does each religion of human history come from, what stories do they share, what are they used for in culture — and do the shared stories trace to common sources?
Method in one line: every shared story gets a falsifiable descent / contact / convergence verdict, dated to its earliest evidence. Full framing: Methodology. Rules of conduct: AGENTS.md.
Visual explorer: https://god.olibuijr.com (public) · http://192.168.8.228:4870 (LAN) · systemd --user religion · Live status: 00_meta/STATUS.md · live experiences: Deep-time timeline · Descent trees · First voices · Motif diffusion map · Stand-there scenes · Evidence observatory · Pantheon grid · Whisper chain · Ritual walkthroughs (plus the ⏱ time-machine scrubber in the header)
The three tiers
Every domain directory has the same shape. Material only moves up, and only through templates:
| Tier | Directory | What lives there | Template gate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 — Data gathering | 1_sources/ | Raw evidence: dated sources, citations, extractions | source |
| 2 — Notes | 2_notes/ | Atomic claims, tradition profiles, shared motifs | claim · tradition · motif |
| 3 — Synthesis | 3_synthesis/ | Integrated essays with Feynman check + open questions | synthesis · question |
The loop that makes this compound: synthesis exposes gaps → gaps land in the Open Questions register → gaps re-task gathering. Gather to answer questions.
Domains
| Domain | Scope |
|---|---|
| 00_meta | Methodology, open questions, bias audits |
| 01_prehistoric | Paleolithic burials, cave art, shamanism, animism, Göbekli Tepe — religion before writing |
| 02_mesopotamian | Sumer, Akkad, Babylon — earliest written religion, Eridu/Uruk temple record |
| 03_egyptian | Predynastic→dynastic religion, Pyramid Texts, Osiris cycle |
| 04_indo_european | Reconstructed PIE religion and its daughters: Vedic, Iranian/Zoroastrian, Greek, Norse |
| 05_abrahamic | Canaanite/Ugaritic substrate → Israelite religion → Judaism → Christianity → Islam |
| 06_dharmic | Indus Valley + Vedic → Hinduism; śramaṇa movements → Buddhism, Jainism; Sikhism |
| 07_east_asian | Shang oracle bones, Chinese folk religion, Daoism, Confucianism, Shinto |
| 08_indigenous | African traditional, Americas, Oceania/Australia — oral traditions, ethnographic + archaeological evidence |
| 09_comparative | Shared motifs (flood, dying god, sky father, underworld journey…), transmission verdicts, function theories |
Frontmatter contract (short version)
Every note: title, type, domain, tier, status, created, tags. Claims/motifs/syntheses additionally require confidence and counter_evidence. Origin claims require attestation_earliest + evidence class (or speculative). Motifs require a transmission verdict: descent | contact | convergence | unresolved. Full contract with field meanings: templates/ — copy a template, never write frontmatter from memory.
Agent roster
| # | Agent | Model | Mandate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Prehistoric researcher | Fable 5 | 01_prehistoric tiers 1–2 |
| 2 | Mesopotamia researcher | Fable 5 | 02_mesopotamian tiers 1–2 |
| 3 | Egypt researcher | Fable 5 | 03_egyptian tiers 1–2 |
| 4 | Indo-European researcher | Fable 5 | 04_indo_european tiers 1–2 |
| 5 | Abrahamic researcher | Fable 5 | 05_abrahamic tiers 1–2 |
| 6 | Dharmic researcher | Fable 5 | 06_dharmic tiers 1–2 |
| 7 | East Asia researcher | Fable 5 | 07_east_asian tiers 1–2 |
| 8 | Indigenous researcher | Fable 5 | 08_indigenous tiers 1–2 |
| 9 | Adversarial bias reviewer | Fable 5 | Audit all tiers → 00_meta bias report |
| 10 | Synthesis writer & discussant | Fable 5 (high thinking) | 09_comparative + tier-3 essays + open questions |
Workflow rules, ethics, and source standards binding all ten: AGENTS.md.
Experiences backlog (immersive, interactive — takes you back in time)
Ten designed proposals live in 00_meta/ideas/ — each grounded in vault data, zero-dependency, served by the existing explorer. All ten are now built (first slices live; deepening passes — more rooms, scenes, walkthroughs — continue as gathering permits):
1. time-machine-mode — site-wide era scrubber (S core, biggest ambient win) — built (header ⏱)
2. deep-time-zoom-timeline — zoomable 100,000-year timeline (S first slice) — built (/timeline)
3. descent-tree-explorer — cognate-glow lineage trees (S static first) — built (/tree)
4. first-voices — humanity's oldest religious words as torch-lit rooms (S, 2 rooms) — built (/voices)
5. motif-diffusion-map — scrubbable flood/sky-father spread map (S slice) — built, great-flood slice (/map)
6. stand-there-scenes — "you are there" pages with honesty toggle — built, Eridu room (/scenes)
7. evidence-observatory — epistemic mission control (M) — built (/observatory)
8. pantheon-correspondence-grid — Zeus = Jupiter = Dyaus ≠ Thor, visceral — built, typographic v1 (/pantheon)
9. whisper-chain — the oral-transmission chasm, walked — built (/whisper)
10. ritual-walkthroughs — scroll-driven emic/etic ritual documentaries — built, Shang divination (/rituals; Akitu/Vedic/Opening-of-the-Mouth blocked on register Q31–Q33)
Infrastructure
- ISA.md — ideal-state articulation / test harness for this vault
- tools/server.ts — bun web explorer (systemd unit
religion.service, port 4870) - Images: GPT-5.5 via codex CLI only (see AGENTS.md → Image pipeline)
- MCPmarket toolkit plugin: installed at
~/.claude/plugins/mcpmarket-my-toolkit(skill sync on session start)