imprint
The load-bearing human-authored document that imprints a product's soul onto any collaborator, human or AI, so every regeneration stays this product, not generic.
An imprint is a warm doc about a product.
Ducklings imprint on the first thing they see, and it shapes everything they do after. AI collaborators work the same way. Whatever context loads first shapes everything downstream, and in AI-collaborative work almost everything is downstream: code, design, copy can all be regenerated. The imprint is the part that has to come from a person. It determines whether each regeneration stays your product or drifts toward the median of every product ever built.
Warmth is what makes it work. A cold doc describes: “Admissions reader, 3 to 9 years experience, evaluates transcripts, uses a CRM.” A warm doc knows she’s on her third Diet Coke, her eyes hurt, and she can spot a padded transcript in four seconds. The cold version regenerates into anything. The warm version can only regenerate into this.
Nobody can write it for you. An engineer can write the code and a designer can design, but the imprint comes from whoever holds the vision, or it comes from no one. People building with AI have been solving this by feel, with CLAUDE.md files and scattered vibes docs. The category exists. It hasn’t had a name.
What goes in one is being worked out in the open here, with a real product as the first worked example.
In progress: the imprint questionnaire, the worked example, an essay.