My Interpretation of ICM - The Weld

I originally built my AI workspace based on a Jeff Su video about cross-domain folder hierarchy. Shortly after, I watched Jake Van Clief's videos and the Interpretable Context Methodology (ICM).

I thought what I was building was an ICM setup at first. But as I learned more, I realized I was doing something different. So I found a way to weld the two ideas together into a more comprehensive system.

Here is how the integration works:

Tiers 1-3 (The Reasoning System): This is the Jeff Su inspired structure. It handles routing and context delivery for different topics, sorted by Tier 2 domain. By the time you reach a Project at Tier 3, you hit the reasoning level, where the context and Claude md roles completely change depending on the work. These are organized by State/Kind rules embedded in the system, and reasoning sessions are distilled and indexed with key points synthesized to project context.

Tier 4 (The Workflow): Once the reasoning is stable at T3, ICM comes in as the workflow layer underneath it. Figure out what you want to build in the reasoning Tier 3, configure the factory to build it in Tier 4.

I've mapped out the basic folder structure in the diagram below, and attached the actual markdown doctrine file that runs it.

CoworkOS Workspace Structure

============================

ROOT/

├── CLAUDE.md (Tier 1: Root Map & Routing)

├── CONTEXT.md (Tier 1: Operator Contract & Global State)

├── 00_Resources/ (Tier 1: Global Reference docs)

│

├── Workstation_A/ (Tier 2: Broad Domain)

│ ├── CLAUDE.md (Tier 2: Workstation Map & Routing)

│ ├── CONTEXT.md (Tier 2: Domain Posture & State)

│ │

│ └── Project_1/ (Tier 3: Reasoning Project)

│ ├── CLAUDE.md (Tier 3: Project Identity)

│ ├── CONTEXT.md (Tier 3: Live Reasoning Synthesis)

│ ├── _reasoning-log/ (Tier 3: Spent thinking & ideation)

│ ├── references/ (Tier 3: Settled constraints)

│ │

│ └── tier-4-workflow/ (Tier 4: ICM Pipeline)

│ ├── CLAUDE.md (Tier 4: Factory Map)

│ ├── CONTEXT.md (Tier 4: Factory State)

│ ├── _config/ (Tier 4: Factory Craft/Voice)

│ ├── 00_plan/ (ICM Layer 0 Stage)

│ ├── 01_collect/ (ICM Layer 1 Stage)

│ ├── 02_draft/ (ICM Layer 2 Stage)

│ └── 03_adapt/ (ICM Layer 3 Stage)

Since I'm still learning, I'd love some insight from the experienced members here. Do you see a setup like this adding to ICM's use case, or am I just conflating ideas and over-engineering it?

Note: Git repo template coming soon. Next post.

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My Interpretation of ICM - The Weld