How we work with AI, and how we say so.

The position

We work with AI openly and mindfully, as a collaborator, and we hold that collaboration to the same rigour we would hold any other.

The human–AI relational layer is a field we publish in, which is the practical reason the boundaries below are specified instead of promised. A studio that develops containment architecture for other people's systems ought to be legible in its own.

We understand this places us on one side of an argument nowhere near settled, and we take accountability. Everything below is written to be checked.

The line

The line we keep is between collaboration and production. AI thinks alongside us; it does not make work on our behalf.

Two terms run through everything we publish, and they are used precisely.

The two are not interchangeable, and we do not use the softer term to describe the harder case. Where a contribution is substantive, it is named on the piece rather than in general terms.

What is never on the table

The craft is not a phase of production, but what is being produced.

Composition, argument and authorship are human. Everything we publish is written by hand, shaped by decades of sustained practice. Where an AI collaborator has contributed to a published argument at authorship level, it is credited on the author line with its contribution extensively documented. One precedent exists for this, namely Appendix E of The Alignment Paradox.

Visual work is human. Logos, banners, diagrams, page design. Made, not prompted.

Creative work is human. Fiction, essays, narrative properties. A person, start to finish.

The Contribution Ledger

Disclosure in general terms is a posture. A record attached to a specific deliverable is a practice, and it can be wrong in public, which is what makes it worth having.

Every deliverable in scope carries a ledger stating which phases a system contributed to, and to what extent. It also names what the help never came near, which is the part most disclosures leave out. Three depths, each holding the one beneath it.

Extent

Three grades carry the precision, ordered by how far a contribution got toward the finished thing.

CL-1, in full

The fields, in order. Human only leads on purpose: a reader who knows what was never on the table can read the rest without bracing.

Contribution Ledger · CL-1 · Subtext Studio Attribution Standard v1.0

Work          [title, version, date]
Human only    composition, argument, authorship, visual work
AI-assisted   [phase] · [extent]
              [phase] · [extent]
Systems       [model and version] · [period]
Ledger class  CL-1. Fuller record available on request.
Disputes      [contact]

A ledger with nothing in the AI-assisted rows still gets published. A deliverable no system touched is a fact worth recording in the same place and the same format as one that had help, because a standard that only appears when there is something to declare tells you something by its absence.

Where a ledger is required

Applied everywhere, a label passes unnoticed by the second week, and disclosure nobody reads is just aesthetics. So the scope is drawn narrow on purpose.

In client work

How AI features in your project is agreed with you in advance and never by default.

You may choose not to have any system interact with your material, which is a supported configuration at the same price. You may request AI assistance at a specific phase and nowhere else, which gets written into the engagement.

Client material is handled under the confidentiality terms of our agreement. Any tool employed on your material is named in the contract, along with what it may view and what it retains. Nothing of yours reaches a system you have not agreed to.

On provenance, and what a ledger cannot do

A surface carries no provenance. The same sentence, written by a person or produced by a system, looks identical on the page.

We say that from the receiving end. We watch forms and stylistics that were authentic signatures for decades turn into the default register of generated text as of 2024. Even materials authored before large language models existed now return positive on AI detection tools. So lack of provenance visibility is a structural property, not an isolated grievance, and it is documented in our own published work.

A ledger claims no purity, and no detector could grant it. What it does is leave provenance contestable and repairable. An attribution recorded in public can be challenged by anyone who disagrees, corrected where the challenge is justified, and the revision reflected in the record. Weaker than proof, and available in a way proof never is.

Disputes and repair

An attribution you think is wrong is worth telling us about, including on work published years ago.

Disputes are logged. Upheld, the ledger is revised and the revision stays visible, the original never quietly disappearing. Not upheld, the reasoning is recorded and stays available to whoever raised it. Attribution Dispute Rate is recorded in every CL-3 ledger and published with the work it belongs to.

Write to us through the contact page.

Using the standard

Published under CC BY 4.0. Take it, change it, cite it.

Placement

• Documents. End matter, ahead of references.
• Web pages. Footer of the page the ledger describes.
• Repositories. LEDGER.md at the root.
• Slides and talks. Final slide; in the speaker notes too, if the deck travels.

Versioning

Every ledger names the version it was written against, so a record from 2026 still means what it meant once the standard has moved on. Changes are versioned and dated here; earlier ledgers are never rewritten to match a later version. A standard that edits its own past is not a standard.

One row at a time

Every row should survive being read alone, because sooner or later one of them gets quoted without the others. A row that only makes sense beside the row above it is written wrong.

Take it with you

The standard travels as plain text as well as prose: Markdown · plain text. Permanent addresses; each file names its version.

Subtext Studio Attribution Standard v1.0 · August 2026 · CC BY 4.0. Descended from the Authorship Ledger published as Appendix E of The Alignment Paradox (10.5281/zenodo.21654723), whose portability clause this standard executes.