# spec.yaml
# Canonical activity specification — machine-readable
# Dmitry Zharnikov | spectralbranding.com/spec
# License: CC BY 4.0

meta:
  schema_version: "1.0"
  last_updated: "2026-04-06"
  format: "researcher-specification"
  rendering_url: "https://spectralbranding.com/spec"
  yaml_url: "https://spectralbranding.com/spec.yaml"

identity:
  name: "Dmitry Zharnikov"
  orcid: "0009-0000-6893-9231"
  location: "Limassol, Cyprus"
  languages: ["English", "Russian"]

# WHAT I DO (not who I am)
activity:
  one_line: "Mapping perceptual and organizational dimensions that didn't have coordinates before."

  description: "Formalizing territories previously navigated by intuition alone. Brand perception had no coordinate system — 'premium' and 'authentic' existed without shared measurement. Organizational design had no testable specification — businesses were designed forward from supply, not backward from experience. Both are now mapped."

  research_keywords:
    - "AI-native framework"
    - "brand coherence typology"
    - "brand perception measurement"
    - "computational branding"
    - "observer heterogeneity"
    - "brand identity formalization"
    - "paper specification"
    - "Git-native publishing"

  method: "Original theoretical work with AI-assisted structural verification — maintaining consistency across dimensions, case studies, and companion papers that exceed human working memory."

  output_summary:
    papers: "20+"
    open_source_toolkits: 4
    ai_sessions: "80+"
    perceptual_dimensions_mapped: 8
    specification_levels_defined: 6
    brands_demonstrated: 5
    mathematical_validators: 7

# HOW THIS DIFFERS (positioning)
positioning:
  core_distinction: "Building frameworks WITH AI, not businesses ON AI"
  specification_layer_thesis: "AI commoditizes every task you can name. What it cannot commoditize is the coordinate system that tells it where to apply precision. Business models built on 'AI does X' are vulnerable — AI will do X cheaper next quarter. Frameworks that define WHERE to measure, WHAT dimensions matter, and HOW to test coherence become more valuable as AI accelerates, not less."

  comparison:
    - others: "Build businesses ON AI (chatbots, wrappers, agents)"
      this_work: "Build frameworks WITH AI (measurement, specification)"
    - others: "Ask 'how do I use AI to do X faster?'"
      this_work: "Ask 'what can I now see that I couldn't see before?'"
    - others: "Produce essays, threads, takes about AI"
      this_work: "Produce papers, validators, toolkits — coordinate systems"
    - others: "Treat AI as a productivity tool"
      this_work: "Treat AI as a scientific instrument — microscope, not calculator"
    - others: "Chase what AI makes cheaper"
      this_work: "Map what becomes MORE valuable as AI accelerates"
    - others: "Optimize execution speed"
      this_work: "Extend architectural reach — more dimensions, cases, consistency"

# FRAMEWORKS PRODUCED
frameworks:
  sbt:
    full_name: "Spectral Brand Theory"
    domain: "Brand perception measurement"
    what_it_maps: "8 perceptual dimensions (semiotic, narrative, ideological, experiential, social, economic, cultural, temporal) with observer cohort modeling via formal spectral profiles."
    key_mechanisms:
      - "Observer heterogeneity — same brand, structurally different perceptions"
      - "Spectral decomposition — 'brand image' split into 8 measurable channels"
      - "Non-ergodic perception — signals compound multiplicatively, sequence matters"
      - "Metamerism — identical summaries hiding different spectral structures"
      - "Fisher-Rao metric — geometric distance in perception space"
    demonstrated_on: ["Hermès", "IKEA", "Patagonia", "Tesla", "Erewhon"]
    cross_model_replicated: true
    website: "https://spectralbranding.com"
    paper_doi: "10.5281/zenodo.18945912"
    github: "https://github.com/spectralbranding/sbt-framework"
    newsletter: "https://spectralbranding.substack.com"

  ost:
    full_name: "Organizational Schema Theory"
    domain: "Business operations specification"
    what_it_maps: "6-level specification cascade (L0-L5) from customer experience contract to sourcing requirements. Businesses designed backward from experience goals using testable, version-controlled specs."
    key_mechanisms:
      - "Specification cascade — each level derived from the one above"
      - "Fork, don't franchise — copy the test suite, rewrite the implementation"
      - "Organization as metadata — the org is the config file, not the program"
      - "Acceptance testing for business — every operational parameter validates against specification"
    website: "https://orgschema.com"
    paper_doi: "10.5281/zenodo.18946043"
    github: "https://github.com/spectralbranding/orgschema-framework"
    newsletter: "https://orgschema.substack.com"

  convergence:
    thesis: "SBT (external perception) and OST (internal specification) are two projections of a single system — the business observed from outside and from inside. Neither is complete alone. The 8x6 activation matrix maps every operational parameter to its perceptual output."

  bio:
    full_name: "Body-as-Metadata Thesis (BIO)"
    domain: "Biological foundation of the rendering problem"
    what_it_maps: "The structural pattern underlying SBT, OST, and the Activity Specification Protocol: a specification (DNA) is rendered into an implementation (body) that produces an emergent phenomenon (consciousness) no specification contains. The specification gap — where implementations exceed specifications by orders of magnitude — is structural and irreducible."
    key_mechanisms:
      - "Specification gap — genome (~800 MB) specifies organisms of vastly greater complexity"
      - "Epigenetic configuration — same DNA, different expression per context (identical twins diverge)"
      - "Continuous re-execution — 330 billion cells replaced daily; identity persists in the specification"
      - "Emergence — consciousness is not in DNA or any cell; it arises from the integrated system"
    status: "Research note published; academic paper in preparation for SRBS"

  paper_spec:
    full_name: "Paper Spec"
    domain: "Machine-readable scientific claims standard"
    what_it_maps: "YAML companion files that specify what a paper claims, what evidence it provides, and what its falsification conditions are. Five verification layers (L0-L4)."
    key_mechanisms:
      - "paper.yaml — structured specification of claims, methodology, acceptance criteria"
      - "Dependency graphs — cross-paper claim dependencies with retraction cascade analysis"
      - "Five verification layers — from schema validation to external integrity"
    website: "https://github.com/spectralbranding/paper-spec"
    paper_doi: "10.5281/zenodo.19210037"
    status: "v0.1.0 published; R13 under review at QSS"

  paper_repo:
    full_name: "Paper Repo"
    domain: "Git-native scientific knowledge production protocol"
    what_it_maps: "A four-level protocol: research program = repository (evolving SSOT); paper = render of the research at a point on its timeline (frozen snapshot, communication event); fork = sharing that render with a journal for confirmation; publication = merge. Fork-based submission, compliance gates, attributed reviewer commits, provenance chains."
    key_mechanisms:
      - "Fork-based submission — journals curate frozen forks, not uploaded documents"
      - "Compliance gate — CI/CD validation against journal_spec.yaml before fork request"
      - "AI traceability by design — every AI-assisted edit is a commit with metadata"
      - "Collections-as-users — journals, preprint servers, archives as collection curators"
    website: "https://github.com/spectralbranding/paper-repo"
    status: "Partial prototype (validator, schemas, wiki scaffold, self-referential implementation); R14 submitted to JLSC"

  canon_repo:
    full_name: "Canon Repo"
    domain: "Version-controlled specification for creative intellectual property"
    what_it_maps: "A specification-driven architecture for transmedia IP management. The canonical specification (characters, world rules, themes, constraints) is a repository. Every rendering (book, film, game, translation, toy line) is a fork. Git semantics map to IP lifecycle: editions are tags, adaptations are forks, canon changes are pull requests, consistency validation is CI/CD."
    key_mechanisms:
      - "Spec/rendering separation — the work is the specification, not any particular rendering"
      - "Fork-based adaptations — translations, films, games, toy lines fork from the same versioned spec"
      - "Style as rendering parameter — render(spec, medium, style) composes independent parameters"
      - "Actors and translators as rendering functions — parameterized projections of spec into medium"
    website: "https://github.com/spectralbranding/canon-repo"
    status: "v0.1.0 demo (Romeo and Juliet); paper targeting Convergence (SAGE)"

# INTELLECTUAL PRIORS (the frozen inputs)
intellectual_priors:
  - author: "Eliyahu M. Goldratt"
    work: "The Goal"
    contribution: "Systems constraints — brand health has a bottleneck architecture, not a quality average"
  - author: "Edward Tufte"
    work: "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information"
    contribution: "Information density without information loss — make complex systems legible without simplifying them"
  - author: "David Deutsch"
    work: "The Beginning of Infinity"
    contribution: "Good explanations transfer across domains — the analytical pipeline transferred from financial documents to brand perception unchanged"
  - author: "Jeffrey Liker"
    work: "The Toyota Way"
    contribution: "The standard is a baseline, not a ceiling — separate what must be achieved from how"
  - author: "Genrich Altshuller"
    work: "TRIZ"
    contribution: "Structural contradiction analysis — operational problems are instances of recurring patterns"

# ORIGIN PATTERN (why this work exists)
origin:
  pattern: "Meta-coordination across incompatible systems"
  description: "2005-2006 manufacturing transformation: coordinating German TPS engineers, Russian plant operations, and Indian equipment transfers simultaneously. Not translating between languages — interpreting between operating systems. The meta-coordinator position: outside all systems, seeing their structural relationships. The same pattern now applied intellectually — standing outside branding and organizational theory to map their structure with a new instrument."
  core_lesson: "Coordinate things, not ambitions"

# CREDENTIALS (supporting context, not the lead)
credentials:
  education:
    - degree: "PhD in Economics (Marketing)"
      institution: "Russian State University of Trade and Economics, Moscow"
      year: 2005
    - degree: "Professional MBA Entrepreneurship & Innovation"
      institution: "TU Wien / WU Wien (dual degree)"
      year: 2018
      thesis:
        title: "Strategy of the leading energy generation companies in solar business in the Russian Federation"
        url: "https://repositum.tuwien.at/handle/20.500.12708/79295"
  experience_arc: "25 years across the signal chain: journalism (how orgs present themselves) -> press/communications at national scale -> cross-cultural manufacturing transformation (Lean/TPS) -> consulting (recurring structural problems) -> framework building (SBT + OST). Each stage was a different vantage point on the same structural gap."

# PUBLICATIONS (machine-parseable)
publications:
  zenodo_search: "https://zenodo.org/communities/spectral-branding"
  papers:
    - key: "2026a"
      title: "Spectral Brand Theory"
      doi: "10.5281/zenodo.18945912"
      status: "preprint"
    - key: "2026b"
      title: "Alibi Epistemology"
      doi: "10.5281/zenodo.18944770"
      status: "preprint"
    - key: "2026c-h"
      title: "Mathematical Foundations (R0-R5)"
      dois: ["10.5281/zenodo.18945217", "10.5281/zenodo.18945295", "10.5281/zenodo.18945352", "10.5281/zenodo.18945477", "10.5281/zenodo.18945522", "10.5281/zenodo.18945591"]
      status: "preprint"
    - key: "2026i"
      title: "Organizational Schema Theory"
      doi: "10.5281/zenodo.18946043"
      status: "preprint (under review at M@n@gement, ID 14239)"
    - key: "2026j"
      title: "Spectral Positioning Capacity (R6)"
      doi: "10.5281/zenodo.18945659"
      status: "preprint"
    - key: "2026k"
      title: "Spectral Resource Allocation (R7)"
      doi: "10.5281/zenodo.19009268"
      status: "preprint"
    - key: "2026r"
      title: "Why Eight? (R11)"
      doi: "10.5281/zenodo.19207599"
      status: "preprint"
    - key: "2026s"
      title: "Coherence-Resilience (R12)"
      doi: "10.5281/zenodo.19208107"
      status: "preprint"
    - key: "2026t"
      title: "Paper as Specification (R13)"
      doi: "10.5281/zenodo.19210037"
      status: "preprint"
    - key: "2026u"
      title: "Research as Repository (R14)"
      doi: "10.5281/zenodo.19294864"
      status: "preprint (submitted to JLSC)"
    - key: "2026v"
      title: "Spectral Metamerism in AI-Mediated Brand Perception (R15)"
      doi: "10.5281/zenodo.19422427"
      status: "preprint (targeting JAR)"
    - key: "2026x"
      title: "AI-Native Brand Identity: From Visual Recognition to Cryptographic Verification (R16)"
      doi: "10.5281/zenodo.19391476"
      status: "preprint (targeting JIM)"
    - key: "2026y"
      title: "Brand Triangulation: A Geometric Framework for Multi-Observer Brand Positioning (R17)"
      status: "preprint (Zenodo pending)"
    - key: "2026l"
      title: "The Rendering Problem: From Genetic Expression to Brand Perception"
      doi: "10.5281/zenodo.19064427"
      status: "under review (SRBS)"
    - title: "Organizational Structure as Metadata"
      doi: "10.5281/zenodo.19024230"
      status: "under review"
  prior_publications:
    - type: "textbook chapter"
      title: "Marketing Communications (pp. 200-247)"
      publisher: "INFRA-M, Moscow"
      year: 2012
      note: "Co-authored textbook chapter (in Russian)"
  under_review:
    count: 14
    note: "Fourteen papers under peer review at international journals and conferences"

# COLLABORATION PROTOCOL (how to work with me)
collaboration:
  what_I_respond_to:
    - "Structured questions about framework mechanisms"
    - "Empirical validation proposals (I have the theory, you have the data)"
    - "Cross-domain applications (applying SBT/OST to your field)"
    - "Genuine intellectual challenges to the framework's assumptions"
  what_I_do_not_respond_to:
    - "Generic 'let's connect' messages without specific context"
    - "Requests to 'make it simpler' without specifying for whom"
    - "AI hype or AI fear — I work with AI as an instrument, not a topic"
  preferred_format:
    - "Written over verbal (I think in text)"
    - "Specific over vague (what exactly do you want to test?)"
    - "Structured over narrative (YAML over PowerPoint)"
  channels:
    email: "dmitry@spectralbranding.com"
    linkedin: "linkedin.com/in/dzharnikov"
    x: "x.com/spectralbrand"
    substack_sbt: "spectralbranding.substack.com"
    substack_ost: "orgschema.substack.com"
    researchgate: "researchgate.net/profile/Dmitry-Zharnikov"

# ACTIVE RESEARCH (what's in progress)
active_research:
  - topic: "Empirical validation of observer heterogeneity (H1-H4)"
    status: "seeking data partners"
    need: "Consumer survey data with demographic splits for any of the 5 case-study brands"
  - topic: "AI agent observer modeling"
    status: "theoretical (Article 10 published)"
    need: "LLM benchmark data on brand perception queries"
  - topic: "Cross-industry OST deployment"
    status: "reference implementation complete (Spectra Coffee)"
    need: "Real-world operational data for validation"
  - topic: "Body-as-Metadata (BIO) — biological foundation of the rendering problem"
    status: "research note complete, academic paper in preparation"
    need: "Biology/systems theory collaborators for cross-domain validation"