fractal-work
The practice of consciously descending through nested levels of a problem with an AI collaborator, each level a precondition for the one above, returning to the surface with the deep levels having enriched the work.
You start a chat to fix one document. An hour later you’re naming a studio, and you haven’t fixed the document. Whether that was a productive hour or a lost one depends entirely on whether you can find your way back up.
Fractal work is descent on purpose. Every real task hides a smaller task underneath that has to exist first, and under that another. Before AI, following the thread down three levels usually meant losing the surface. What changed is that someone can now hold the ladder: the levels stay named, the decisions stay captured, and the deep work comes back up with you.
The discipline is small but strict. Every descent gets a return contract: why this level matters to the one above, and what you owe when you come back. Every level deposits what it learned somewhere durable before you leave it. Capture is what makes descent safe.
In progress: an essay, with figures.