Detached artefact

Added · Seed

Seeded from a cross-catalogue triage of six AI pattern libraries (references/ai-pattern-catalogues.md). Ubiquitous in current products (canvases, artifacts, side panels); the name is unsettled — see To-do.

A piece of generated output is promoted out of the reply stream onto its own persistent surface — beside the conversation, directly editable, iterated in place while the dialogue steers it.

Resources & references

To-do

The name is a placeholder — candidates: detached artefact, output canvas, promoted output. The transcript-vs-artefact divergence force is the interesting one and has no literature attached yet.

Consequences

  • the work-product holds still on its own surface while the conversation continues alongside as the way of steering it — talk and thing stop competing for the same column
  • two surfaces now claim the truth: the artefact and the transcript can disagree about what was decided, and edits made directly don't narrate themselves back into the talk
  • the artefact outlives the exchange — versionable, exportable, shareable — which is where the conversation's value ends up living

Related patterns

Enacts

  • Malleability — gives the output a surface where direct manipulation applies at all

Complements

  • Editing in place — once detached, the artefact is edited directly rather than re-asked for
  • Draft and publish — the detached artefact is the surface draft and published states attach to

Related

  • Workspace — a minimal workspace grown out of a chat — one context, two surfaces
  • Living document — a detached artefact that keeps being regenerated shades into a living document

Preceded by

Hosted by

  • Conversation — born in the exchange and promoted out of it; the chat remains the artefact's control surface