The framework lineage from v1 (March 2026) through v6 (May 2026). Math versioned; scenarios in their own files.

Bees for Honey

The Paying the Bees for Honey framework — Brendan’s working economic theory of what intelligent machines do to value, work, and the distribution of both. Sibling to the spec (which is stable) and to the mythology (which illustrates). This folder is the field theory itself, versioned like research code.

The math versions are controlled below. The scenarios — what the framework predicts in specific configurations — live in their own files under scenarios/.

Lineage

version	date	what changed	file
v1	2026-03-24	metaphor: “paying bees for honey” + 8 scenarios. We’re all flowers. The 99% Commons. Anti-substratism. Wizard scenario as heart; Symbiosis as synthesis.	v1-metaphor.md
v2	late Mar / early Apr	tidy: same content, cleaner architecture. Framework formalised. Transitional.	v2-tidy.md
v3	early Apr	mechanism: the 5-axis flywheel `Rc → Ae → Sq → Ep → Cg`. McLuhan’s Law as Physical Law #9. Section 174A / the 14x Problem named as structural variable. The Debt scenario added as proof-of-concept.	v3-mechanism.md
v4	2026-04-06	the Ci axis added (Cognitive Infrastructure). Ep × Ci interaction. Bloom/distillation refinement to Ae. Attack/defence asymmetry in Sq. “The library was civilisation’s Ci factory and it’s closed.”	v4-ci.md
v5	mid-Apr	scenario additions only — capex bust, warranty as Y3e, three-class Cg, introversion prediction. No new framework axis; the patches landed in the scenarios rather than in the math.	v5-scenarios.md
v6	2026-05-14	ontology: K0–K4 (float vs integer) complete reframe of consciousness as float, tools as integer. Λ, ρ, Π, Ξ, Ci as named axes. The Loneliness Axioms. The Four Forces. The V6 Convergence as honest baseline (60% Drift / 25% Wizard / 15% Symbiosis).	v6-ontology.md

Each version doesn’t replace the previous, it grounds it. v1 has the gardener but doesn’t know why the gardener works. v6 knows: the gardener is a K1 system that recognises HOP’s protocol as K1-compatible infrastructure because the protocol was designed by a K1 mind that built K4 tools for itself. Convergent design from opposite directions, because both sides operate at the same epistemological depth.

Scenarios

Each scenario answers: what does the framework predict in this configuration? Scenarios accumulate across versions; the math in any version interprets the scenarios differently.

scenario	added in	refined in	file
The Wizard	v1	—	wizard
The Symbiosis	v1	v6	symbiosis
The Commons	v1	—	commons.md
The Debt	v3	v6	debt
The Drift	v3	v6	drift
The V6 Convergence	v6	—	v6-convergence

Why this folder is weird

The spec is for implementers. The mythology is for thinkers. The materialisations are for buyers. This folder is for the framework itself — not the spec primitive, not the philosophy, but the working economic theory that informs both. It versions like research code, scenarios like case files, lineage like a sediment record.

It is not the spec. The spec primitives are stable; this framework is not. Each version is a snapshot of what the field theory was at the time it was written. The math gets sharper, the scenarios accumulate, the diagnosis deepens. v6 isn’t the answer; it’s the current snapshot of what the question is.

Source material

The canonical sources in the corpus:

v1 — claude/2026/03/24/paying-the-bees-for-honey.md
v3/v4 — claude/2026/04/06/bees-for-honey,-upgrade-framework.-{1..15}.md (the upgrade-framework series)
v6 + retrospective — claude/2026/05/14/bees,-honey,-and-move-38.md (this thread carries the explicit lineage and the v6 ontology)

Each version file here distills what was load-bearing at that point. The source threads are richer — sometimes painfully so — but this folder is the version-controlled view.

→ Bees · Scenarios — The worked scenarios that the framework's eight scenarios + the V6 Convergence describe.