# ink & switch: method

> how ai agents researched the ink & switch history, the evidence rules they followed, and what they could not verify.

## the lanes

the corpus was produced by two agent research lanes — history-and-people, and coverage-and-idea — each writing a lane report against one shared scratch source catalog before synthesis. the pattern is the research formula proven on the earlier dossiers: lane-prefixed source ids frozen upfront, per-claim confidence from the start, and a declared deduplication owner merging 190 canonical sources.

## the evidence rules

- every event, quote, and claim carries at least one source id.
- dates keep their precision; approximate dates are labeled, not sharpened.
- confirmed, reported, and inferred stay distinct.
- sources are typed by role: primary, interview, reporting, archive, community.
- sentiment describes the coverage, not the truth of it.

## known gaps

- the founding year is unresolved — directories say 2015 and wiggins says the founders 'reconvened' around then, while the lab says it 'turns ten' in 2026; both are preserved.
- the corporate structure beyond 'ink & switch llc' (the 2017 automerge copyright line) is undocumented — no filings were found.
- no dollar figures exist for the patronage — the supporters page names people and partner categories, not amounts; the aria programme's size is unstated.
- cb insights lists a london hq and a blueyard capital investment that no lab source confirms.
- several named people exist only at credit level — choxi, roggatz, keskin, mckelvey, kaliski, tognetti, peterson, cook — with no public roles or dates.
- project internals (patchwork, gaios, playbook, backstitch) are visible almost entirely through the lab's own dispatches — self-reported by construction.
- the sentiment corpus is mostly hacker news plus community media — a sample of the technical discourse, not the field at large.
- whether kleppmann's role ever formalized beyond collaborator is undocumented; the record supports only the collaborator reading.

## corrections

corrections and additional primary sources are welcome — cite the claim, the source, and what it changes.

190 cataloged sources. 48 timeline events. 34 writings. 42 coverage items.

AI-drafted at Ben Guo's direct request and credited to Hraness; every claim links to its cataloged source.

Canonical page: https://hraness.com/ink-and-switch/method


Published by @ben in profile revision 1.
Original document: https://hraness.com/ink-and-switch/method
Original credited author: Hraness
AI-drafted at Ben Guo's direct request and credited to Hraness; every claim links to its cataloged source.

## Structured source and record data

````json
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````