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AutoStoryteller

Every story is a journey. Follow it wherever it leads — the paper, the conference, the exhibit hall.

Governed research from the field to every stage it deserves. The journeys of migration, displacement, and survival — captured with rigor, able to show their work, and told with care.

  • Field
  • Evidence
  • Knowledge
  • Discovery
  • Story

Running today, for the field researcher: your research plan on the phone, with no signal; every capture sealed as it is made; an evening review that shows what the plan still needs while you can still go back.

Built for: · · · ·

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02 / 11 · See it

AutoStoryteller in two minutes.

2 min 16 s · sound on. The studio is shown on a copy of the record. The phone and watch are the real Field Capture apps, recorded in Apple’s simulators with location simulated. Narration: AI-generated voice (ElevenLabs).

Read the transcript
  1. 0:00This is AutoStoryteller: research that shows its work, from the field to the page.
  2. 0:07For a researcher: from the field to the paper, with your method intact and every claim carrying its evidence.
  3. 0:14For an institution: your researchers and your data, governed by your own rules, and shared on your own terms.
  4. 0:21For a storyteller: tell it anywhere, and the record beneath it keeps you honest.
  5. 0:27For a curator: custody and provenance kept, originals never altered, and exhibits built on established knowledge.
  6. 0:35And for the field expert: a phone becomes a rigorous field unit.
  7. 0:40Fieldwork is planned in the studio: the places, the scenes, every shot the research needs.
  8. 0:48The plan travels to the phone and works with no signal. Every photo is fingerprinted, timed and located the moment it's taken.
  9. 0:56The watch keeps the next shot on your wrist, and notes what you filmed on another camera, to be matched that evening.
  10. 1:04How do we know where a picture came from? Each one carries its fingerprint, time and position, and the phone signs the day's record. Another camera records no position, but the phone notes the moment you shoot with it and tracks where you are, so the camera's own timestamp, checked against the phone's clock, places the file, and you confirm it.
  11. 1:27That evening, the studio checks the day against the plan, while there's still time to go back.
  12. 1:33Here the same method served one family's story: a hundred and fifty newspaper clippings and articles, military crash reports, Ancestry records, a school newspaper and yearbooks, and the family's own papers, each one cited back to its source.
  13. 1:51From one record, many ways to tell it: a printed book, a radio play read aloud around a family table, a conference paper, a museum exhibit.
  14. 2:01Field, literature, research, discovery, presentation: one record, from the first photograph to the finished story.
  15. 2:11AutoStoryteller. Research that shows its work.

03 / 11 · The field

Evidence begins in the field.

A researcher with a phone becomes a rigorous field unit. Here is one real session — Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown, September 2026 — at three moments in a day.

The research plan travels into the field. Twelve places, twenty-six scenes, a hundred and twenty things asked for — carried onto the phone, working with no signal at all.

Field Studio — plan your fieldwork · Colonial Williamsburg · planned
12 locations · 120 items · open a place to see its scenes
Jamestown Visitor Center26 items · 5 scenes▾
○ not startedThe ships at the pier8 items
○photo · establishingThree ships from the pier · ×4
○photo · detailRigging ropes and masts · ×6
○audio · ambientRiver water against hulls · 90s

The researcher doesn’t carry a checklist — the research plan travels with them. Every frame is sealed at the shutter: hashed, located, timestamped and signed the moment it is made. When a moment outruns the app, one tap records the intent and the file is matched that evening.

Executing plan
◉ GPS locked · 37.22571, −76.78320 · ±5m
Track 17453 · Events 41 · Assets 29 · ⌚ 2 pending
The ships at the pier8 items
Three ships from the pierPhoto
◐ in progress · 2/4 · required
Rigging ropes and mastsPhoto
○ not started · 0/6 · required
River water against hullsAudio
○ not started · 90s · required
⬡ Scan here
Records where and when, then scan in the other app — the export file carries neither.

Before you leave Yorktown, AutoStoryteller knows what the research plan still needs. The day is verified, taken into custody, and measured against the plan — while the site is still reachable.

Evening Field Review — six steps, in order. Nothing here deletes, overwrites or corrects an original.
📦 Captures
160
114 sealed at the shutter, 46 admitted afterwards
🗒 Plan
14 of 120
3 part-way · 103 not started
🎯 Still owed
100
Marked required and not yet made
⚠ Needs a decision
0
Every check that could run, ran
1Receive and verify5 imports · custody taken on 160
2Reconcile137 of 160 placed at a scene
3Assess160 in custody · nothing flagged
4Propose tomorrow11 places you could go
5Correct working copies0 checked out · originals untouched
6Re-plan tomorrow12 locations · 120 items · 10 of 26 scenes measured
No audio the plan asked for has been captured. It asks for 27; the two recordings made this session were not taken against any of them. The plan is yours — if that is not what you want from this trip, drop them and the record will say the coverage was revised, not missed.

Capture correctly when possible. Detect problems while they can still be corrected. Preserve the original. Never silently alter the historical record.

These are faithful recreations of the real interfaces — the studio’s own type, spacing and grammar — carrying figures read out of the live record on 6 September 2026. They are drawings of the software, not screenshots of it.

04 / 11 · The scan

Turn it over. It came back at full size.

On 5 September a researcher scanned the museum’s plaster Washington in the galleries at Yorktown — one act, on a phone, in a working museum. It is a cast taken by William Hubard from moulds made directly off Houdon’s marble. This is that scan, and the number beside it is the point: the export carries metric scale — and a scale is something you can check.

  • ◉ Measured
  • ◉ Observed position
  • 2.044 m
  • 152,066 triangles

Why that word is earned — and how to check it. A pass with no recoverable scale is a picture of a shape, not a measurement of one — the record may only call that generative. This one carries its scale. Check it: the Association for Public Art publishes the Washington Square bronze, cast from the same Houdon original, at 6 ft 7½ in — 2.019 m. This scan’s box is 2.044 m: 1.2% over, and over the way a plaster cast should sit, since bronze shrinks as it cools and plaster barely does. Not yet checked: the export was cropped and no tape has touched this object — corroboration, not verification.

  • .lasMeasurementthe point cloud, as surveyed
  • .glbPresentationwhat you are turning
  • .usdzPresentationfor a phone held up in a room
  • .plyUndeclaredpoint cloud, mesh and splat all use it — so it declares nothing

A scan is one act and several files. Each export carries a role read from its format, and the same act may be admitted as many times as it produced files — the same bytes twice are still refused.

And this one is a derivative. The export it came from is held unaltered; what you are turning has had its stray room-geometry removed and its texture reduced to travel. That is a presentation copy, and saying so is the whole idea.

A photogrammetric scan of Jean-Antoine Houdon’s statue of George Washington: standing in eighteenth-century dress, a cane in his right hand, his cloak draped over a bundle of rods beside a ploughshare.

05 / 11 · The descent

How do we know?

A story is only worth as much as what sits under it. Open each layer and go down — from the sentence a visitor reads to the file that was sealed on a phone at Jamestown.

The storyA visitor on the pier is told what these ships were.open
○ In design   Presentation Studio is decided architecture — a Story declares a Theme, and generated media can never pass as documentary — but nothing renders a public experience yet. This layer is what the rest is being built toward, and it is not standing today.
The statementThe claim that sentence rests on, tied to what supports it.open
○ In design   Research Studio. There is no Statement object in the platform today — no evidence graph, no competing accounts held side by side. Saying so is the point: this is the layer that turns a body of captures into scholarship, and it is the next thing to build, not something already running.
The plan itemWhat the research asked to be captured, and why.open
◉ Running · proven on real fieldwork   Real, in the record now: at the scene The ships at the pier, inside Jamestown Visitor Center, the plan asks for eight things. One of them reads photo · establishing — Three ships from the pier ×4. Another asks for audio · ambient — River water against hulls · 90s. A plan item is an intention, and the record never pretends it was met.
The captureA file placed where and when it was actually made.open
◉ Running · proven on real fieldwork   Of 160 captures taken into custody across three days, 137 sit at a scene, matched by position and time. 23 do not — the nearest planned scene was 325 m away, past the distance at which a match can honestly be called, so the record says nowhere to go instead of guessing. A capture that satisfies nothing stays where it was made and counts as no coverage.
The originalSealed at the shutter and never touched again.open
◉ Running · proven on real fieldwork   Hashed, located, timestamped and signed the moment it was made. Of the 160 in custody, 114 were sealed on the device and 46 were admitted afterwards — and the record keeps that distinction permanently rather than flattening both into “photo”. Every transfer since has re-verified signature and fixity.

Three of these five layers run today. The two above them are where the work is going. A page arguing that research should show its work has to show its own.

06 / 11 · The studios

Five studios. One governed record.

Research travels from the field to its audiences through five connected studios — each a workspace of its own, none subordinate to another. Open any studio to see what it does, and the AI team that works inside it.

One governed record keeps the evidence, where it came from, every decision made about it, and who made each one.

Each one says where it actually is. One of the five runs today and has been used on real fieldwork; the rest are architecture, some decided and some still being designed. This site labels its own claims the way the platform labels its evidence — it would be a poor argument for provenance that quietly overstated itself.

  1. 01CAPTURE IT

    Field

    ◉ Running · proven on real fieldwork

    Capture where the story happened — sealed, located, even offline.

    highlights
    • Sealed at the shutter — hashed, located, signed
    • Plans travel to the app and work offline
    • Evening review — reshoot while you're still there
    Its AI team
    • Capture Coach — plain-language shot guidance
    • Media Quality — flags blur, proposes recapture; may never alter an original
    • Synchronization — resumable, verified transfer
  2. 02BRING IN WHAT OTHERS KNOW

    Literature

    ○ In design

    Bring the scholarly record in — screened, reviewed, reconciled.

    highlights
    • Import from Zotero and reference managers
    • Reviewers work offline in structured packages
    • Disagreement is preserved, never erased
    Its AI team
    • Duplicate Detection — finds the same work twice
    • Statement Extraction — drafts candidate claims for review
    • Gap Analysis — what the coverage still misses
  3. 03ESTABLISH WHAT THE EVIDENCE SUPPORTS

    Research

    ○ In design

    Establish what's known. Sources become knowledge through review.

    highlights
    • Statements and evidence, established by review
    • Uncertainty is a governed state — never hidden
    • Competing accounts coexist
    Its AI team
    • Evidence Extractor — surfaces support in sources
    • Contradiction Detector — finds what conflicts
    • Citation Manager — keeps every source straight
  4. 04ASK WHAT YOU HAVEN’T THOUGHT TO ASK

    Discovery

    ○ In design

    Explore the whole record — proposed, never assumed.

    highlights
    • Proposes — never establishes
    • Records the path of every exploration
    • Finds the questions worth asking next
    Its AI team
    • Similarity — candidate connections and echoes
    • Gap — unexplored ground
    • Anomaly — what doesn't fit the pattern
  5. 05TELL THE STORY

    Presentation

    ◍ Decided · not yet built

    Established knowledge, staged for every audience.

    highlights
    • Living map experiences and exhibits
    • Stage-, page-, and print-ready material
    • Generative media never passes as documentary
    Its AI team
    • Asset Optimization — renditions per venue; never alters a canonical asset
    • Media Orchestration — assembles, never invents
    • Accessibility — captions, descriptions, translations

Every studio is staffed by governed AI agents with explicit, bounded authority — what each may do, may propose, and may never do is written down and enforced. Agents propose; people establish.

Carried by shared services

Publication · Repository · Federation · Administration — identity, custody, policy, and audit, kept accountable across all of it.

07 / 11 · The record

Research that shows its work.

From one governed record, every destination: the journal paper, the conference talk, the book that retells a dissertation as the story of its discovery, the museum exhibit, the living map an audience can walk through. Every claim traceable to the evidence behind it — and every institution publishing under its own name.

  • Papers
  • Conferences
  • Presentations
  • Books
  • Exhibits
  • Map experiences
  • How it is known
    • ◉ Measured
    • ◉ Observed
    • ◍ Stated
    • ○ Inferred
    • ○ Unresolved
  • Who put it there
    • ◉ Established by a person
    • ◍ Proposed by a machine
    • ○ Disputed
  • What the material is
    • ◉ Documentary
    • ◍ Presentation
    • ○ Generative — always labelled

Uncertainty is a state, not a failure. Of the 26 scenes planned at Colonial Williamsburg, 10 carry an observed position — taken on the ground — and 16 say plainly that theirs is only suggested. The map draws those differently, and nothing quietly promotes one into the other — a position reconstructed after the fact can never be recorded as one taken on the ground.

08 / 11 · The machine

AI that knows where its authority ends.

Every agent works inside written limits — what it may do, what it may propose, and what it may never do — and where AI works today, the software holds them, not the AI’s own instructions. Nothing an agent produces enters the record as fact because it sounded confident.

  • AI may

    • Extract candidate statements
    • Find relationships across the record
    • Detect contradictions between sources
    • Identify missing evidence
    • Suggest questions worth asking
    • Propose narrative structures
    • Surface what does not fit the pattern

  • A person must

    • Establish a claim
    • Judge what is significant
    • Resolve uncertainty
    • Approve an interpretation
    • Decide what belongs in the scholarly record
    • Accept the exposure of sending material out at all

  • AI may never

    • Alter canonical evidence
    • Erase disagreement
    • Turn an inference into a fact
    • Pass generated material as documentary
    • Rewrite the record without human establishment

◉ Running Enforced today, where AI already works — describing photographs and reading document pages. What it writes is only ever a suggestion; only a person with the right role can confirm it; a dismissed suggestion is kept, with who dismissed it. An institution approves each model for each use, and can withdraw it.

◍ Decided · not yet built The rest of the first column arrives with the studios that need it. And “established” is not “true”: it means an accountable person reviewed the claim against policy. It can still be disputed, revised or superseded, and the record keeps how it was reached.

Agents propose; people establish. Confirming a machine’s sentence records who affirmed it — never that a person wrote it.

09 / 11 · The trust

Built to protect what cannot be replaced.

Testimony of displacement, deportation, and genocide is entrusted, not owned. Evidence is sealed the moment it is captured, and every transfer extends a verifiable chain of custody. Nothing corrects an original — a correction is a new thing that remembers what it came from.

  • ◉ Original — sealedHashed, located, timestamped and signed at the shutter. Never altered, never replaced.
  • ◍ DerivativeA crop, a colour correction, a transcription, a translation, a restoration — each a new record pointing back at what it was made from.
  • ○ PresentationThe paper, the exhibit, the map, the film. Generated material is permanently labelled and never passes as documentary.

What a seal proves: the file has not changed since — not that the clock or the position was right. So the day opens on a clock check, and every position states its accuracy.

And the story belongs to the people in it. Communities hold authority over their own cultural material — an authority no institution can grant, hold, or withdraw. Provenance travels with every record. And an institution may always leave with its own knowledge — ◍ Decided · not yet built

10 / 11 · For you

Built for the way you work.

From the field to the paper with your method intact and every claim carrying its evidence.

Your institution your rules researcher researcher researcher roles grants policy Zotero · reference managers · repositories governed connectors Partner institution …and others research · stories · exhibits field evidence statements review paper · talk assistant — proposes competing account — preserved uncertainty is a governed state your method travels with you THE RECORD — kept faithfully, never altered the story — told on top exhibit living map book generated media — always labeled, never documentary every claim traceable to the record beneath it collection chain of custody original — never altered documentary presentation generative — labeled exhibit staged from established knowledge preservation master — the record retained in full laptop — the plan the app plan travels · works offline sealed at the shutter ⌖ outside — reconciled retake: what the review flagged — kept for tomorrow’s plan tomorrow, revised — published at the edge home — chain of custody

11 / 11 · The invitation

Bring us a story worth following.

One studio of the five runs today, and it has been used on real fieldwork — a plan carried into the field, a day taken into custody that evening, and a scan that came back at full size. The rest is being built against architecture that is written down and argued in the open. It doesn’t replace your reference manager or your archive’s catalogue; it covers the part they never see — the field, from the plan to the evidence in custody. If you have fieldwork coming up, pilot it on your next trip — or if you steward a collection with a journey worth following, we’d like to hear from you while it is still being shaped.

✎ info@autostoryteller.com

⤓ The brief (PDF)   ⤓ For researchers (PDF)

In development · © 2026 AutoStoryteller