What this is
The Ledger is an open-source archival record of AI history. It tracks events, narrative threads, controversies, and the retrospective reinterpretations that change how we understand past moments. Every claim is sourced; every source is inspectable; every entry is immutable once published.
It is not a news aggregator, a wiki, or an encyclopedia. Hot takes, press releases, and ephemeral commentary erode quickly. The Ledger is an attempt at something slower and more durable: a shared reference surface for researchers, journalists, policy people, and engineers who need the field's history to hold up under scrutiny.
History is written by the present. We write it as it happens — then watch ourselves be wrong.
How it works
The Ledger has two layers over the same data. The ledger layer is an immutable, append-only record — every assertion, disagreement, and revision is preserved; git history is the audit trail. The canonical layer is the "current best understanding" view — cleaned up, cross-referenced, and legible. Readers see canonical by default; provenance is always one click away.
Progressive formalization
Entries improve in tiers rather than springing into being fully formed:
- Tier 0 — anyone can submit a source and a claim via a GitHub issue.
- Tier 1 — the curator normalizes the submission into a structured event with metadata, confidence, and significance.
- Tier 2 — specialists enrich entries by connecting them to threads, opening controversies, and signing canonical syntheses.
Contestability
Every substantive claim has a challenge window and a visible contestation status. Disagreement is always possible; "uncontested" is a valid state, not an aspiration. Claims are attributed, dated, and inspectable; factual assertions require sources; analysis is always labeled as analysis.
Significance upgrades
Events carry a significance level — landmark, major, or notable — that can be upgraded over time. The upgrade is tracked and surfaced rather than silently corrected: "we thought this was minor in 2024; we were wrong." Wrongness is a first-class feature, not a bug.
Who runs it
The Ledger is curated by Terry Tang. Curator-led means named responsibility: syntheses carry the curator's name, revisions carry dates, and editorial decisions are public. The project launched as a single-curator framework with an explicit roadmap toward a rotating editorial board as contributors onboard to the standards.
All content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) . Contributions happen on GitHub — source tips, corrections, and challenges are all welcome through the repository's issue templates.
The constitution
The editorial framework — on immutability, contestability, source primacy, time awareness, and pluralism — is codified in the project's constitution. The long version lives in the repo alongside the evidence standards and style guide.
AI assistance disclosure
Some entries are marked draft_assistance: ai-assisted in their
frontmatter. This means the initial draft was produced with AI help; every such
entry is reviewed, edited, and sourced by the curator before publication.
AI-assisted drafting is a tool, not a byline — the curator is accountable for
every published claim.
Thanks & colophon
Built with Astro, styled with Tailwind, typeset with Fraunces (display), Source Serif 4 (body), Inter (chrome), and JetBrains Mono (metadata). Hosted on Vercel. Force-directed relationship graph powered by react-force-graph.
Thanks to everyone who has submitted tips, flagged errors, or questioned a claim. The ledger is better for it.