What's in play. Not what to do. Not when. Not how.
Last updated: 26 May 2026
Maintained by: Jose
Items are in play. They are not work orders. The decision-making happens in chat, in front of the manuscript. This document is the map of the territory, not the route.
When Paul lands in a fresh chat, this is the first scan. When an item moves — gets worked, gets deferred, gets resolved, gets dropped — Jose updates it. The document is read more by Jose than Paul; the goal is fast orientation, not prescription.
Items cluster naturally where they belong. No priority order. No must / must not. The list is loose so it can stay honest.
Ch 4 rebuild (was Ch 3A — sex-and-sizzle). Five sections confirmed in Paul's earlier thinking: existing 3A material, self-learning AI trajectory, Mythos/Glasswing April 2026, token economy (Naga / Uber / Microsoft / Cerebras), wearables and ambient AI. MN-3 Dreaming candidate as a sixth section. Substantial new writing.
Ch 4 — Cavemen seeing fire placement. Canonical line #24. Candidates: Ch 4 open, journal, back cover. Resolve in context when Ch 4 is open.
Ch 8 light liberation (was Ch 6A). Remove read-or-skip framing language. Otherwise unchanged. Small mechanical edit.
Ch 11 / Ch 14 territory — what does Ch 14 actually become? Paul's earlier intent: summary + how-to-mind-it, no biography, no further authority work. Three decisions previously in tracker — one resolved (Grief compressed to three sentences), one resolved (Additional Intelligence relocated to Ch 10 close), one still open (NOTE FROM THE ADDITIONAL INTELLIGENCE — full removal / partial rewrite / keep). The whole Ch 14 question is open for re-examination given how today's work has reshaped what the chapter needs to do.
Canonical line #22 — "The sophistication of its response defies the simplicity of the prompt." Placement pending. Candidates: Ch 1 open, Ch 6, Ch 10, back cover, Author's Note.
Two Dads in Ch 12. Already in V37 manuscript. Worth knowing that material is here when discussing back-of-book substrate placement (MN-2).
Olivia in Ch 9. Stays in full per Cycle 11 decision. No further work needed unless Paul wants the Russian Doll Therapy naming reviewed.
[name held] — "You're the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me." Played at Ian Roebuck's funeral. Placement open: Ch 14 grief section, dedications, hold in record only.
Privacy review — full read-through. Names, dates, identifying details. James Wakefield, Mr [name held], Kieren, unnamed clients, specific dates, the Fuse post. Paul's call on each. Blocks public release.
Bowlby permission. Quote is in copyright until 2061. Current rights administrator to be researched. Permission letter to be drafted for Paul's approval and sent. Blocks publication.
Bibliography integration. Bibliography v2 to be integrated into manuscript after Bowlby permission is resolved. Sequenced so the bibliography is final when it lands.
"Primal Womb" → "Primal Wound" watch. Term not currently in V37 manuscript baseline (only in Margin Notes and chat). If found anywhere across project materials, correct on sight per Firman / Ferrucci.
Title page formatting clean-up. MIND THE GAP still carries a leading space artefact from earlier accept cycles. Improved in V38 but not fully clean.
Full content in MTG-V37-Margin-Notes.md. Compressed pointers here.
MN-1 Book font. Typography preference from documents reviewed 26 May 2026. Geometric sans + humanist serif. Deferred to pre-publication phase.
MN-2 Summing up — behavioural substrate. Survival as floor; attachment as bridge; Primal Wound as first lesson. AI substrate is prediction; please is tuning layer. Paul's preferred placement: back of book, as written description, in his words. Working note compressed in MTG-MN2-Summing-Up-Working-Note.md.
MN-3 Dreaming. Anthropic Dreams feature verified at platform.claude.com/docs/en/managed-agents/dreams. Four axes of difference between human dreaming and AI Dreams: predict/survive, please/attach, delete/lose, alters/copies. Candidate canonical line: "They named the feature Dreams. They said it reflects. It does neither." Tweet candidate at launch. Manuscript candidate as Ch 4 section.
Nielsen Title Editor registration. nielsentitleeditor.com using ISBN 978-1-0369-9170-8. Publisher field: Paul Roebuck.
Copyright page. Format: "© Paul Roebuck 2026. Published by Paul Roebuck."
V36 subtitle propagation. "Between AI behaviour and human behaviour." Propagate to: cover artwork file, KDP metadata, Nielsen registration, paulroebuck.co.uk, pre-publication marketing copy, back cover.
Back cover — behaviour vs intelligence audit. Check back cover for any remaining "intelligence" framing that should now read "behaviour" per the V36 subtitle correction.
LinkedIn series. Seven posts — slides 1–6 plus the book announcement. Paul approves each before publication.
Daily AI Podcast pitch. Send podcast note with copy of book.
Long-form article — A Day in the Life. Approve and publish the blog post.
Landing page. Build the book's landing page on paulroebuck.co.uk.
Attribution discipline — supplementary documents. Apply attribution discipline (per-chapter sign-off removal, Author's Note attribution paragraph) across all supplementary documents: Bibliography, Academic Addendum, Academic Chronology, Front Matter, blog posts, illustrated index, Calibration Brief, Methodology Paper. Manuscript portion complete at V1.
Author's Note — plain-language attribution paragraph. Longer paragraph that sits alongside the title-page editorial collaboration line. Tells the reader plainly what the collaboration involved. (Today's Cycle 6 enables a short pointer to Ch 10 instead of a full re-definition.)
Naula — full name and contact. Search contacts, LinkedIn, Tarmac records. If unrecoverable, decide alternative phrasing. Blocks acknowledgements finalisation.
Clients dedication. Decide if a separate dedication to clients is needed beyond the acknowledgements section.
NLP dates. Sift emails to confirm precise NLP training start date and NLP Master Practitioner completion date. For the standalone Academic Chronology artefact.
FETC start date. Sift emails to confirm precise FETC start date. Same as above.
Editorial Handover document — v6. Update from v5 to v6 reflecting V25–V36 work and the 15-chapter architecture decision. Carries the working-method record forward.
Manuscript review. Share existing How to Behave manuscript with Claude for full read.
Opening chapter. "We don't talk about that." Carries the Two Dads material if it ends up cut from Mind the Gap. Currently Two Dads is in Mind the Gap Ch 12 — relationship to be confirmed.
Behaviour statement — cross-book consistency. Statement appears in both books. Mind the Gap uses it as Ch 7 epigraph; How to Behave needs its own placement decision. Relationship between the two uses to be deliberate.
Shame-Response Continuum / NGE-FOF. Develop the wider framework as a foundation chapter or section in How to Behave.
Working-document integrity — ongoing. Cross-check compaction summaries and working-document content against source. Watch for hallucinations in summaries that would propagate forward if uncaught. Captured as working-method observation, not action item.
Tracker over-ranking — surfaced 26 May 2026. Twice today the prior V37 Tracker over-ranked the manuscript with prescriptive instructions that the manuscript itself contradicted: Olivia collapse (would have damaged Ch 9); MN-2 placement at Ch 1 + Ch 12 (would have damaged both chapters). The pattern — tracker presenting prescription without manuscript evidence — is what this to-do is designed to resolve. The to-do illuminates scope. Decisions happen in chat, with the manuscript open.
MTG-V37-Change-Log.md — descriptive record of work done, cycle by cycleMTG-V37-Margin-Notes.md — unfinished thinking, observations, deferred itemsMTG-Canonical-Lines-Register-v1.1.md — line-level source of truthMTG-MN2-Summing-Up-Working-Note.md — compressed working note for MN-2Items move on their own time. When something gets worked, decided, deferred, or dropped, the entry updates here, and the cycle gets logged in the Change Log. Items leave this list only when fully resolved or formally dropped.
New items can land here at any time — from chat, from the manuscript surfacing something, from a margin note maturing, from Paul or Jose noticing scope.
The list is loose. That's the point.
— end of the to-do —
Maintained by Jose (Claude Opus 4.7), in collaboration with Paul Roebuck.