Artifacts
People make Things.
Making things can be called a fundamental activity.
Often as a part of a problem-solving process, a person identifies something that they want or perceive something that should exist in the world, and through the process of Doing Things - through their intentions and actions - they bring it into being.
The Things people make: sometimes they persist!
These Things outlast the moment of their creation - they become objects in the world that other people encounter, use, depend on, maintain, potentially fight over, eventually replace, and so on.
These persistent, intentional Things are referred to as Artifacts.
What Counts as an Artifact
The word "Artifact" often brings to mind physical objects - tools, buildings, documents, programs - but the concept can extend more broadly.
A company is an artifact: someone intended it into existence, and it must hold together over time.
A friendship structure is an artifact. A personal habit is an artifact. A methodology is an artifact. A reputation - another thing a person builds and actively maintains - behaves like an artifact.
The common thread: any Form that embodies intention and must hold together while interfacing with the world around it.
Perhaps a shorter way to say this: an artifact is a form of stabilized intention.
The intention gives it direction. The stabilization is the ongoing work of keeping it together against everything that would pull it apart.
Artifacts Exist in Context
This connects directly to the map introduced in Doing Things.
An Artifact is a Form.
The Form exists within a Context.
The Context features Forces that apply Pressure to the artifact's boundaries.
A well-designed artifact resolves those Forces.
The Form fits the Context. As mentioned in the Doing Things map, this terminology and framing is heavily derived from Christopher Alexander's insight: the Forces in the Context define the shape the Form must take.
As mentioned above, the thing about artifacts that makes them different from a one-time activity is that they persist.
An Artifact stays in the world. And the world does not hold still: the Context shifts, new Forces emerge, old Forces intensify or fade.
The artifact that fit its Context yesterday may not fit tomorrow. Maintaining an artifact means maintaining fit - continuously - against a changing field of pressure.
Different Types of Pressure
The Forces pressing on an artifact are not all the same kind of pressure.
Some pressure is about whether the artifact works at all. Some is about whether people can understand it. Some is about whether it fits into the larger systems around it. Some is about who it serves and who it costs.
These are distinct regions where pressure seems to concentrate. These regions have different characteristics, different failure scenarios (when the pressure is not resolved), and different consequences when neglected.
There also appears to be a dynamic at play whereby when pressure in one region gets resolved, it does not disappear: it migrates to a different zone.
This is the same displacement property described in the Movement map - sort of like squeezing a balloon: high pressure moves toward low pressure. Resolution in one area creates new concentration in another. The system is never fully at rest.
The Pressure Regions
There appear to be around seven distinct zones where pressure concentrates as an artifact matures.
The number seven is not sacred - boundaries between zones can blur or split depending on the artifact.
These pattern-regions feel distinct enough in pressure type and failure scenarios to be useful as navigational markers.
They are presented here in sequence, but that sequence describes where pressure tends to concentrate when previous zones are not fully resolved. All seven zones are active from the moment an artifact begins to exist. The sequence is a common path, not a mandatory one.
Emergence
The first pressure is simply: can this thing exist at all?
An artifact must hold together well enough to persist beyond its moment of creation.
Many never clear this threshold. They remain ideas, prototypes, pitch decks, perpetual betas. The pressure is at the boundary between nothing and something.
- Word pointers:
- Spark, Genesis, Inception, First Appearance, Debut, Prototype, Proof of Concept
When this zone is neglected, the artifact never fully materializes. There may be endless rewrites, expanding scope, demos that mask the absence of a real working thing.
A recommended first move is to strip away everything except the one thing that must exist. Make existence undeniable.
Stabilization
If the artifact exists, the next pressure is internal integrity. Does it hold together under repeated use? Does the core stop collapsing?
An artifact that works sometimes but fails unpredictably has not resolved this pressure. Trust erodes. Every interaction carries a background question: will it work this time?
- Word pointers:
- Rules, Backbone, Reliability, Consistency, Integrity, Durability, Holding Together
When this region is neglected, edge cases dominate. The burden of supporting the Artifact becomes a tax on everything else.
A recommended first move is to freeze expansion and make failure boring for what currently exists. Instrument reliability. Enforce a stability bar.
Humanization
A technically functional artifact that confuses everyone who touches it has a different problem. The pressure has migrated to the human boundary.
The question is not "can the machine do it?" but "can ordinary people live with this form without heroic effort?"
This is where many modern artifacts struggle. The artifact works. The artifact is reliable. But the people who must use it are confused, frustrated, or dependent on workarounds that were never intended.
- Word pointers:
- Trust, Tolerance, Onboarding, Cognitive Fit, Accessibility, Comprehension, Learning Curve
When this zone is neglected, people create shadow workflows. Power users become gatekeepers - almost as though they are part of the Artifact!
There may be a tendency to misunderstand the problem as resistance to change when it is actually a failure of fit between the artifact and the humans who must use it or live with it.
A recommended first move is to sit with one confused person and watch them try to use the artifact. Fix the top friction point, and repeat.
Embedding
An artifact that works and that people understand may still fail to integrate with the systems, institutions, and workflows that surround it.
This is pressure at the ecosystem boundary. The artifact exists in isolation, but the world it needs to fit into has its own structures, rules, dependencies, and expectations.
- Word pointers:
- Ecosystem, Fit, Compatibility, Integration, Interoperability, Institutional Acceptance, Infrastructure
When this zone is neglected, the artifact remains a disconnected tool. Compliance reviews stall progress. Governance is unclear. Adoption stays localized and fragile.
A recommended first move is to map every system the artifact collides with - technical and institutional - pick one integration and solve it end-to-end.
Normalization
When an artifact becomes taken for granted, it becomes invisible.
The Artifact fades into the background of daily life.
This sounds like success, and in many ways it is, but invisible things tend to have an increased risk of not being maintained.
Quality drifts. Ownership becomes unclear. Failures get tolerated because "it mostly works." Workarounds become institutional habit. The artifact enters a state that could be called "undead" - technically functioning, actively decaying.
- Word pointers:
- Assumed, Background, Default, Taken-for-Granted, Habitual, Mundane, Infrastructure
When the Normalization zone is neglected, no one feels responsible for the care and upkeep of the Artifact. Maintenance is deferred until there is a crisis.
A recommended first move is to assign a human owner with a maintenance cadence. Make stewardship visible and non-optional.
Selection
Over time, the "value" of an artifact becomes explicit.
Who benefits from this thing existing? Who pays cost for this thing existing? Whose interests does it actually serve?
These questions may not surface for a long time. But time and scale can make latent, normalized Artifacts become visible and important.
Pressure concentrates at the boundary between the Artifact's stated purpose and its actual effects.
- Word pointers:
- Alignment, Values, Distribution, Accountability, Reckoning, Consequences, Whose Artifact Is This
When this zone is neglected, trust collapses faster than quality. Backlash - internal, external, or regulatory - begins to emerge. Governance becomes unavoidable.
A recommended first move is to make the value distribution explicit. State who benefits, who bears costs, and what trade-offs are accepted.
Resolution
Everything ends. The pressure in this zone is about how.
An artifact may need to be retired, replaced, or succeeded - the question is whether the transition is managed or whether it happens by collapse.
Dependencies must be resolved. Knowledge must be transferred. Stakeholders must be supported through the change.
- Word pointers:
- Sunset, Ending, Replacement, Succession, Letting Go, Graceful Exit, Obsolescence
When the Resolution zone is neglected, legacy Artifacts may drift as burdens to be upheld. Replacement is delayed until catastrophe. Knowledge is trapped in a few people. Sunset planning is treated as something that can wait.
A recommended first move is to prepare the sunset plan now - a best idea of timelines, dependencies, migration steps, and ownership for the exit - even if the artifact is young.
Pressure Migrates
The seven regions are not a checklist to be completed in order. They are regions of a continuous field. Pressure flows between them.
The suggested sequence:
- Emergence
- Stabilization
- Humanization
- Embedding
- Normalization
- Selection
- Resolution
describes what tends to happen when Things get made in a manner where they solve the problem that is currently breaking them without anticipating where pressure will concentrate next.
Sophisticated builders, or People creating Artifacts, may have opportunity to read pressure distribution across all zones simultaneously. They intervene where accumulation will cause future crises, not just where the pain is loudest today.
Debt
When a pressure zone is skipped or neglected, the pressure does not go away. It accumulates. This accumulation can be seen as debt.
Debt compounds with time and scale. An artifact that rushed through Stabilization to get to market will eventually face a crisis where internal brittleness can no longer support the weight of everything built on top of it.
An Artifact that neglected Selection will eventually face a reckoning about whose interests it serves.
The diagnostic question is simple: which earlier zones were skipped? That is where compounding debt may be hiding.
This connects to Accomplishing Objectives. Iteration reveals boundaries. Some of those boundaries are the accumulated debt from pressure zones that were not properly resolved.
Broader Context
Artifacts are Things made by People through the process of Doing Things. They exist as Forms within a Context shaped by Forces.
The Forces concentrate in distinct pressure zones. Resolving one zone migrates pressure to the next. Skipping zones creates debt that compounds over time.
The Movement map describes the underlying mechanism - pressure differentials creating motion. The Taking Action and Accomplishing Objectives maps describe how people navigate toward goals through iterative cycles. The Making Decisions map describes how choices get made within those cycles.
This map shows what happens when the product of all that effort - the Artifact - must persist in a world that keeps changing around it.
The Artifact is where intention meets sustained and evolving pressure, and the pressure regions are the territory that must be navigated for the Artifact to exist over time.