Marrow mechanics · system overview
One record, seven layers — each one permanent, each one visibly derived from the one above it. Open a layer below to see how data flows.
Every field note produces a layered chain. Nothing replaces the raw words; every version sits downstream of its predecessor.
The raw layer is the bedrock. Every cleaned-up version — every summary, every structure, every draft — sits visibly downstream of what you actually typed. Nothing replaces it, and nothing edits it in place.
Both timestamps are preserved — the moment the event happened and the moment you wrote it down. If there's a gap, the gap is part of the record, along with your explanation of it, if you gave one. Late is recorded as late, not disguised.
The engine sorts your narrative into labeled items: what you did, what you saw, what someone told you, what stayed unresolved — using your exact words, never a paraphrase. These categories never collapse into one another, because "I saw it" and "someone told me" are different kinds of statements and a defensible record keeps them different.
"I remembered something" is a first-class part of the chain: added after the fact, linked to exactly what it clarifies, and never absorbed into what you knew at the time. A late clarification isn't suspicious — it's how memory works, and Marrow records it as what it is.
An advisory layer surfaces support gaps, contradictions, and open threads — "this claim has nothing behind it," "these two statements conflict." It flags; it never suppresses what you preserved, and it never issues a verdict about you or your record.
Only after all of the above: a polished output generated from the preserved chain, visibly downstream of it, regenerable at will — and structurally unable to overwrite what it came from.
The document you give to someone who's asking hard questions: professional on its face, and able to show its work — original wording, later clarifications, what was extracted versus inferred, what stayed open. Stronger than neatness alone.
Raw words, file descriptions, and timing anchors are saved in a single transaction and protected by multiple independent storage-level guards against deletion and rewriting — each guard tested against real delete attempts.
The engine reads a saved narrative and sorts it into labeled items — did, saw, was told, unresolved — using exact wording. Verified against a real saved record: every span verbatim, output stable across repeated runs.
Every record is owned. One user provably sees zero of another's data, enforced inside the database itself and covered by tests that automatically extend to every new part of the chain.
Re-processing a record creates a new run alongside the old one — never an overwrite. Even Marrow's own derived work has a preserved lineage.
The storage layer fully understands "here's what I remembered" as a first-class event — and will refuse a clarification that clarifies nothing. What's missing is the front door: the interface doesn't offer it yet.
The advisory layer's structure and rules are in place — a finding must point at something and cite its basis, enforced in storage. The pass that actually writes findings is next.
Deliberately last among the layers. The polished output only gets built once the chain beneath it is visible and correctable — so the draft can never quietly become the product.
The current interface is honest but built to prove the chain, not to welcome a person. Reshaping it for someone who has never heard the word "schema" — and shouldn't have to — comes once the chain it presents is finished.