Material · 02
The Canonical Model
How the business works, captured once and kept, as the tools built on it come and go.
Tools move quickly now. This year’s assistant, this year’s model, this year’s platform will not be next year’s. A business that pours its knowledge straight into a particular tool has tied its memory to something with a short life, and when the tool is replaced the understanding has to be gathered again from scratch.
The Immutable Canonical Model, ICM for short, is that understanding held somewhere durable and independent of any one tool: a structured, plain account of how the business actually works, kept stable while the software around it changes. Delivered as an ICM workspace, it is a layer the other materials can read from, so an assistant, a document system, or an automation draws on the same account of the business instead of each keeping its own.
What changes when it is assembled
With a canonical model in place, replacing a tool stops meaning starting over. A new assistant or a new model is pointed at the same durable record and inherits what the business has already established about itself. The knowledge outlives the tool, which is the whole idea: the model is meant to be the stable thing, and everything faster-moving is built against it.
It is one material among many, not the assembly itself. A small, steady operation may hold its understanding in simpler parts and never need this one. The Reading decides whether a business has enough moving pieces, or enough change ahead, to be worth capturing this way.
The durable layer beneath the fast-moving ones. When the Reading calls for it, the material the other materials read from.
Where it belongs
In assemblies whose operating knowledge should outlast any single tool. Whether it belongs is a question the Reading answers. Browse the assemblies →