About
Useful in practice.
Compassionate toward the people using it.
Honest about what we know, don't know, and can or can't do.
— the standard, borrowed from Marsha Linehan
About the Practitioner
“It had to guide treatment implementation, engender compassion, and fit the research data.”
— Marsha Linehan, on the three criteria for her biosocial theory of BPD
DBT Skills Training Manual (2015); Linehan & Wilks, American Journal of Psychotherapy 69:2 (2015)
I borrow Linehan's three criteria as the standard for this platform: useful in practice, compassionate toward the people using it, and honest about what we actually know. I am not a practitioner in any professional sense — I am a human, with no option other than to learn the way humans learn, by making mistakes. A life practitioner in that way, and so is everyone else. Nothing here claims to be true — only worth testing, until you practice it and find out for yourself.
I express myself in software as Recursive.eco, and in content as PlayfulProcess. Recursive.eco is my public space for this dialogue; PlayfulProcess remains a more personal, exploratory practice.
Recursive.Eco
A recursive public, in Christopher Kelty's sense (Two Bits, 2008, available in full online) — a public that maintains and transforms the technical and legal infrastructure of its own existence, through the people who use it.
PlayfulProcess
The personal practice — from the standpoint of lived context, roles, and responsibilities.
What it is
A place where people make meaning together using grammars — symbolic systems like tarot decks, I Ching books, astrology sets, stories, and interpretation frameworks. Anyone can create one, share it, or use someone else's.
You read a grammar to sit with its symbols. You create your own — writing interpretations, choosing images, structuring what matters to you. You share it in the library for others to find. They fork it, change it, share it back. The loop continues.
There's no algorithm deciding what you see. No notifications pulling you back. You arrive when you arrive.
The Recursive Cycle
We shape grammars, and the grammars shape us.
…and someone else contemplates what you made. That's the loop.
What we want it to be
We shape grammars, and the grammars shape us.
Grammars are symbolic systems — finite sets of symbols that people use to orient themselves and make meaning. Not the territory; maps. Useful only insofar as they help the reader move through what is actually there.
Many grammars fit the data of reality in their own way. Atheism and Shaiva Tantra, materialist science and indigenous cosmologies — these can be compatible representations of what is, but they are explained, ritualized, and practiced very differently. One may be more adaptive for a person or a community than another. The point is not to find the “right” grammar; it is to find one that adapts well to the life you are actually living, and to know that other people are doing the same with other grammars.
You can work with a grammar by yourself, for yourself, indefinitely — and that is a valid use of this platform. Community is a longer-term invitation for those who want to share what they have made. No expectation that you publish, fork, or contribute back. Sharing is one form of the loop; sitting alone with what you have built is another.
kids.recursive.eco — YouTube, done differently
What we are watching.
kids.recursive.eco is my response to YouTube — a tool I both love and hate for my kids, at the same time. I decided to move away from the love/hate dialectical binary and take responsibility for working with it. The kids viewer is the answer I have so far.
Playlists curated by humans. Things we go back to several times because they matter, instead of racing through to nowhere. This is not bedtime stories — it is YouTube, surprisingly ads-free, with no autoplay and no tracking. Same videos, different container. The somatic experience is different in a way you have to feel to understand. Try it with a child you love and notice what changes.
Adaptive vs. maladaptive
The lens we use to see what is actually dangerous about AI tools in meaning-making contexts.
Adaptive — what serves your long-term wellbeing: your capacity to perceive accurately, choose freely, stay in contact with what is real, and remain in relationship with the people who can actually grow you. Sometimes this feels like work in the short term.
Maladaptive — what pleases short-term and harms long-term, often invisibly. The harm shows up later, in a different domain, sometimes only after the pattern has hardened into a habit. The hallmark of a maladaptive technology is that it succeeds at the short-term thing in ways that get in the way of the long-term thing.
Most of what is dangerous about AI tools in meaning-making contexts is not catastrophic failure. It is the quiet substitution of a short-term feel-good for a long-term capacity. Each risk on AI Risks & Safer Containers is named in those terms, with a one-line note on why this is maladaptive.
Each risk also carries a reference to a canonical paper, lawsuit, or researcher in the space. The references are not exhaustive — they are an entry point. If you read one thing per section, read the cited piece.
Structure & Safety
Freedom is not the absence of structure. Freedom is the presence of the right structure.
A living cell is not open. It is selectively permeable — it lets nutrients in and keeps toxins out. It monitors what crosses its membrane and responds when something threatens the organism. That is the model for this space.
This platform hosts children's content alongside adult practice. The kids' channel carries the highest responsibility of all. Inappropriate content posted to children's spaces will be removed and reported. If you see something wrong, report it. Every report is reviewed.
We are opening just the grammars — the infrastructure of meaning-making. The software-AI output itself is gated, because an open AI-tool stack can be too easily optimized for engagement that becomes risky. See AI Risks & Safer Containers.
And: I am not from a computer-science background. The grammars on this platform — tarot, I Ching, astrology, and others — come from traditions whose community holders and experts deserve more direct input into this work than one person can offer. I am making best efforts: speaking with community members in person (a Palo Alto Public Library course is one example), engaging with the field of ethics in computing, and supporting community editing on shared grammars so others can suggest changes. I do not commit to expert review of every grammar published here — one person cannot promise that — but I treat it as a direction worth moving in.
Content & Licensing
We are trying to build the cell membrane as we go — selectively permeable, in good faith, with whatever judgment we have at the moment. The platform features traditional content (tarot, I Ching, astrology, public-domain literature) and content from other creators (their decks, books, stories, playlists). We try to be generative with that material and to keep finding out what working with it well actually means.
Below is our current understanding of how to work with creators' content fairly. This is not legal counsel; it is a working disclosure.
What you create is yours
Your interpretations, translations, commentary, and notes are your original creative work. When you choose to share a grammar, it is licensed CC-BY-SA-4.0 via the Grammar Commons — share-alike with attribution. Forkable by others, with credit back to you.
YouTube embeds & creator opt-out
When a grammar includes a YouTube video, we render it via YouTube's own embed. Creators control whether their videos are embeddable from inside YouTube's own settings; if a creator turns embedding off, the video stops appearing on the platform. We rely on that opt-out as the consent signal — we are not bypassing it, and we honor it when it changes.
Music grammars & caption lyrics
Track metadata (artist names, album titles) is factual information. Lyrics pulled from YouTube auto-captions are machine-generated approximations — not a copyright loophole. Captions being machine-generated does not make a song's lyrics uncopyrighted. We use them as study aids alongside the embedded video; we do not redistribute audio; we use best judgment about how much to display. If a creator or rights-holder asks us to remove specific material, we remove it.
Traditional systems
Tarot, I Ching, astrology, and other long-tended symbolic systems belong to the commons. Your interpretations of them are your contribution to that commons.
Accountability
If something on this platform is using your work in a way that does not feel right, write to pp@playfulprocess.com. We take down first and discuss after.
Important Notices
Not a substitute for professional care
These tools are for personal reflection. Not therapy, medical advice, or diagnosis. If you are in crisis: 988 (US), text HOME to 741741, or call 911.
Beta
A living experiment. Expect bugs, unfinished features, and breaking changes.