KN-86 Field Dispatch — Pipeline
House rules:
- Every dispatch has to earn its place. If a week produces nothing worth reading, we skip it rather than pad.
- Three lanes when the content is there: BUILD LOG (what shipped), LORE DROP (fiction artifact), CARTRIDGE WATCH (design/gameplay). A dispatch can lean on one lane if that’s where the signal is.
- Standard length: 800–1200 words. Long-form: 1500–3000, reserved for essays-of-record.
- Voice: laconic, matter-of-fact about the fiction, terminal framing for Cipher interjections only. Don’t stutter the prose.
Current Pipeline
Section titled “Current Pipeline”| # | Ship Date | Stage | Title | File |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| T01 | 2026-04-24 | FINISHED | The deck starts talking to itself | Transmission-01-2026-04-24.md |
| T02 | 2026-05-01 | FINISHED | Attract Mode: A Love Letter To The Empty Store Shelf | Transmission-02-2026-05-01.md |
| T03 | 2026-05-08 | RESEARCH → OUTLINE | ICE Breaker: One Contract, Start To Finish | Transmission-03-research.md |
| T04 | 2026-05-15 | RESEARCH (event-gated) | First Boot On Real Metal | Transmission-04-research.md |
Queue (not yet staged)
Section titled “Queue (not yet staged)”| Candidate | Notes |
|---|---|
| Why Lisp? | Paradigm essay. Risk/reward both high. Reserve for a week when the build log is quiet and we need the essay to carry. |
| What 1988 Sounds Like | Needs audio assets produced — 6–10 short clips illustrating the YM2149 cue library. Queue behind a week where Josh has time to cut them. |
| The Operator’s Manual, Chapter One | Recurring lore artifact. Could be a monthly inclusion rather than a standalone issue — consider running it as a sidebar inside regular dispatches instead of a solo transmission. |
Weekly Rotation
Section titled “Weekly Rotation”Each Monday, the pipeline rotates:
- The Finish slot ships Friday.
- The Outline slot moves to Finish (start drafting Monday, ship Friday).
- The Research slot moves to Outline (topic decided, structure written, open questions logged).
- A new candidate from the Queue enters Research.
If the Queue is empty, the Monday meeting picks from the live project: what shipped last week, what spec just landed, what hardware arrived, what writing artifact was added.