Show HN: FalseWork – Extract transferable structural mechanisms from works
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Solo dev here - grew out of my own cross-domain research. I'm especially interested in edge cases: works that break, refuse, or collapse under structural analysis. If you have examples that shouldn't work, I want them.
We often say things like "Tarkovsky sculpts time" or "Borges builds infinite regress." These sound insightful, but they're hard to apply, test, or break in another domain. FalseWork tries to make those claims concrete enough to reuse.
The goal isn’t similarity or tagging, but extracting generative rules that could plausibly reproduce the source structure under counterfactual conditions.
The pipeline runs in 7 stages:
- Structural inventory – literal components and constraints - Internal relationships – how parts connect and depend on each other - Tensions & contradictions – where the structure strains or destabilizes - Mechanism validation – counterfactual checks against the source - Generative rules – rules that would reproduce the structure - Cognitive competency – what engaging with the work trains you to perceive - Structural profile / "recipe" – consolidated, reusable output
Each stage uses different temperatures (≈0.3–0.6). Decomposition benefits from precision; synthesis benefits from variation. Single-pass LLMs produced unfalsifiable "vibes." The staged pipeline with validation checkpoints fixed that.
Example: Bach's Art of Fugue and Reich's Music for 18 Musicians both resolve to systematic permutation of constrained material. The system reaches this by independently extracting generative rules from each, not by analogy or tagging.
Sample profile: https://falsework.dev/structural-profile/39f92a7e-92fb-4140-...
Stack: Claude API, Next.js, PostgreSQL 73 structural profiles 140 cross-domain syntheses 280 extracted "recipes"
Domains so far: cinema, architecture, music, secured-transactions law, cryptographic protocols, MMORPG resource systems.
What I'm looking for:
- Works that resist structural analysis (edge cases, pathological examples) - Domains I'm missing (choreography? sports tactics? rituals?) - Anyone building adjacent systems or thinking along similar lines
Link: https://falsework.dev