docs(track): fable_review_20260617 section 1 — The 3 Sources

Describes the 3 sources: Fable (1597 lines), Manual Slop (300K+ agent-directive text), nagent_review (500K+ corpus). Fable is the subject; Manual Slop and nagent are the reference points. ~150 lines. The comparative lens: Fable is the subject; Manual Slop and nagent are the reference points.

conductor/tracks/fable_review_20260617/report.md

@@ -77,7 +77,82 @@ Adopt the Useful patterns (epistemic + memory + workflow; ~7 of 10 clusters), ex
 
 ## §1. The 3 Sources (Fable, Manual Slop, nagent) — What's in Scope
 
-*[FILL IN: ~200 lines. What is Fable, what is Manual Slop, what is nagent. The 3-source comparison framework.]*
+### What this section is
+
+This section describes the three sources compared in this review and the boundaries of the comparison. The review is a critical analysis of Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 system prompt (the public "Mythos" version) against Manual Slop's existing agent-directive corpus and Mike Acton's nagent patterns. Fable is the subject; Manual Slop and nagent are the reference points.
+
+### Source 1: Fable System Prompt (the subject)
+
+The Fable artifact is at `docs/artifacts/Fable System Prompt.md` (the spec referenced `.txt`; the actual file is `.md`; 1597 lines, 124KB). It is a single-file system prompt for Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 model, organized into major sections:
+
+- `claude_behavior` (lines 6-163): product_information, refusal_handling, critical_child_safety_instructions, legal_and_financial_advice, tone_and_formatting, user_wellbeing, anthropic_reminders, evenhandedness, responding_to_mistakes_and_criticism, knowledge_cutoff.
+- `memory_system` (lines 166-170): a 5-line product disclosure ("Claude has a memory system... the user has not enabled").
+- `persistent_storage_for_artifacts` (lines 172-260): the `window.storage` key-value API spec for Artifacts.
+- `mcp_app_suggestions` (lines 280-310 approximately): the connector-suggestion protocol.
+- `computer_use` (lines 312-420 approximately): the file-creation, file-reading, format-guidance rules.
+- `search_instructions` (lines 438-560 approximately): the web-search epistemic discipline.
+- `output` (later sections): the `analysis`, `artifact`, `commentary` tool descriptions.
+
+The Fable artifact is local-only; per the user's hard rule, it is never committed to git. Every quote in this report uses the file:line citation pattern (`Fable System Prompt.md:LINE`) and is limited to ≤15 words per Fable's own copyright rule.
+
+### Source 2: Manual Slop (the primary reference)
+
+Manual Slop is a local GUI orchestrator for LLM-driven coding sessions. It is the user's project; this review is "from the inside." The agent-directive corpus is the project-root `AGENTS.md` (~200 lines) plus the `conductor/` tree (workflow.md, product.md, product-guidelines.md, tech-stack.md, edit_workflow.md, tracks.md, index.md) plus the 11 `conductor/code_styleguides/*.md` (~2,400 lines) plus the 6 `.opencode/agents/*.md` (the 4 MMA tier roles + explore + general; ~1,100 lines) plus the 9 `.opencode/commands/*.md` (~700 lines) plus the 40+ `docs/*.md` including the 36 deep-dive `guide_*.md` (~16,000 lines).
+
+The total Manual Slop directive corpus is approximately 300K+ characters of agent-facing text. It is, in the data-oriented sense, "the data is the thing" — the directives are about transforms over data (`disc_entries`, `FileItem`, `ContextPreset`, `RAGEngine`, `comms.log`, `Persona`), not about what the model is named or which product catalogue it can recite.
+
+The project supports 5 LLM providers (Gemini, Anthropic, DeepSeek, Gemini CLI, MiniMax) and is per-developer, multi-provider, strict-HITL (Human-in-the-Loop), and ImGui-rendered. The user is the principal; the model is the tool. The relationship is operator + tool, not conversational partner.
+
+### Source 3: nagent (the philosophical anchor)
+
+nagent is Mike Acton's nagent pattern corpus, a Handmade-Network contribution that distills data-oriented design into agent patterns. The relevant artifact in this project is `conductor/tracks/nagent_review_20260608/`, which contains:
+
+- `nagent_review_v2_3_20260612.md` (4,969 lines; the latest full rewrite; the 14 patterns + 16 future-track candidates)
+- `nagent_review_v2_20260612.md` (1,335 lines; the v2 draft, preserved per user)
+- `nagent_review_v2_1_20260612.md` (1,197 lines; user-revised v2.1)
+- `nagent_review_v2_2_20260612.md` (712 lines; v2.2 incremental)
+- `nagent_takeaways_20260608.md` (599 lines; the original 10 takeaways)
+- `report.md` (1,024 lines; the v1 14-section deep-dive)
+- `decisions.md` (286 lines; the 10 future-track candidates)
+- `comparison_table.md` (211 lines; the flat side-by-side table)
+
+The nagent corpus is **not** a product. It is a pattern library: "the agent is not the thing; the data is the thing." The relevant nagent patterns for this review are:
+
+- §2.1 (4 memory dimensions: curation, discussion, RAG, knowledge) — the memory model
+- §2.5 ("You Did Not Build an Agent") — the philosophical anchor
+- §2.10 (RAG integration discipline: opt-in, complement, provenance, no mutation, feature-gated, graceful failure) — the epistemic discipline
+- §2.14 ("Own the Inputs") — the data-grounding principle
+- §3.2 (Cache ordering) — the 12-layer stable-to-volatile model
+- §3.4 (Conversation compaction) — the 12-section structured digest
+- §3.9 (Per-file knowledge notes) — the durable knowledge dimension
+- §5.5 (Self-review) — the data-integrity-check pattern
+- §6.3 (10-question compaction self-review) — the testable contract
+- §8.4 (Tool discovery, the `--description` self-describing pattern) — the alternative to Fable's `search_mcp_registry`
+
+The nagent corpus has **zero product branding**. It is silent on persona, tone, mistakes, evenhandedness, refusal, and mental-health watch-dogging. This is the contrast that makes the Fable review tractable: when a "persona performance" verdict is reached, the nagent silence on the topic is the evidence that the persona is not load-bearing for an agent system.
+
+### The 3-source comparison framework
+
+The review applies the verdict framework (Useful / Persona Performance / Anti-User / Mixed) to every Fable pattern, anchoring each verdict to (a) what Manual Slop does, (b) what nagent does, and (c) the verdict orientation. The three sources are not symmetric:
+
+- **Fable is the subject** — every cluster is anchored to Fable line ranges.
+- **Manual Slop is the primary reference** — the "what this project does" claims are the project's actual state (per the agent-directive corpus).
+- **nagent is the philosophical anchor** — the "what nagent does" claims are the data-oriented alternative when Manual Slop does not have an explicit analog.
+
+### What is in scope
+
+- The 10 cluster topics in `spec.md §5` (product branding, refusal architecture, mental-health watch-dogging, tone & formatting, mistakes, evenhandedness, epistemic discipline, memory & storage, computer-use, MCP app suggestions).
+- The 3 side artifacts: `comparison_table.md` (~100 rows, flat cross-reference), `decisions.md` (15-20 concrete recommendations for the deferred nagent-rebuild), `nagent_takeaways_fable_20260617.md` (the 17th takeaway, Fable-specific).
+
+### What is out of scope (per `spec.md §12`)
+
+- Modifying any agent-directive file in the project. The recommendations go in `decisions.md` for the user's deferred nagent-rebuild (1-2 weeks out per user 2026-06-17).
+- Comparing Fable to other commercial system prompts (OpenAI, Google, xAI). Out of scope; Fable is the named subject.
+- Reading every line of every project file. Cluster sub-agents read the relevant sections of the relevant files; full-file reads would waste context.
+- Committing the Fable artifact. The artifact stays at `docs/artifacts/Fable System Prompt.md`; clusters quote line ranges but the file itself never enters git.
+- Adding new `src/` code, new tests, `pyproject.toml` dependencies, or `scripts/` files.
+- Running automated tests. The track is research-only; verification is the brainstorming-skill self-review plus user review.
+- The deferred nagent-rebuild itself. The recommendations in `decisions.md` are inputs to that future track; the rebuild is not this track.
 
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