Precision is spent only where a group forms inside a group
It started from a failure. The upper locus was being read off density: every world a bump, every world belonging to the peak it climbs to, peaks merged when the valley between them stayed high. On the live sky that chained twelve worlds into one group through a thin line of in-between worlds, and three worlds on the far left were being counted with the other nine. Ethan: “this is really stupid you know, how do we prevent these long tendrils from forming that are clearly not a part of the group?” And then the worse consequence: “It’s utterly meaningless to change s (brick size) now because even when we up the number of bricks, theyre all going to sit within one address. the entire point of everything has collaspsed because of this algorithim.”
The resolution came as one thought, Sep 18 2026:
“increasing precision does nothing until a group’s density has increased. So even tho multiple lower tiers of precision are available, they dont trigger, into a smaller group is founded in the larger group. This changes our existing grid into a grid made out of grids, just like real grids in 3d software are and like google maps and stuff, theyre a grid but if you zoom in it becomes a finer grid and then another finer grid, girds nested in grids, or techincally, just a grid for each grid square for each grid square, and our precision just determines the number of nestings now. So higher precision is never used until a group is founded within a larger group. Wow this resolves a lot of things within the design, wow”
What it resolves: precision stops being a global setting that either lumps everyone into one address or scatters everyone into singletons. It is spent locally, only where people are actually close, and only as deep as they are close. A crowd on one side of the sky can be five tiers deep while a lone world elsewhere sits at the top.
The grid was never supposed to cut people apart. “no I dont want groups to be split by arbitrary lines in the sky. A brick gets founded, but the anchor moves to the average of the group every time someone joins. The brick is named whatever brick the anchor is in at any given time.” So the lattice only names. The group is founded by the first world in empty space and centered on its members’ average, which moves as they come and go, and whoever the moving region no longer holds falls out and is placed again. And there is nothing to draw: “the sky doesnt actually have a visible grid, dont build one.”
A smaller group forms inside a larger one when two of its members are within the next tier’s size of each other. The first version of that trigger also asked that the pair be isolated from everyone else. That was dropped, and so was a crowding rule that would have required more than two: “no crowding rule tho.” Two groups whose centers come within half a region of each other are one place and merge.
The name is the group’s position written as decimals with the point taken out: “DUDE IT SHOULD BE AS IF WE JUST REMOVED THE DECIMAL POINT.” A group at r 1.2, band 1.3 south, sector 1.6 east is 12r-13se16, and each finer tier adds digits instead of a tail. The + tails had already been killed. How much finer each tier is went through several versions. Tenths were the first compact answer, then rejected as a jump too large for a group to have to tighten by: “but I also want groups to descend on halving, a tenth tighter is way too big a jump” — “ten times tighter I mean.” Pure halving written in decimals grows a digit every tier and never comes out round. Halving rounded to one digit left 3 and 7 unused. What held was halves, then fifths, then tenths, repeating, each cut named by its bottom edge. Every tier is close to half the one above, every third tier is exactly ten times finer, and every digit string is a real address. The top is the whole ball cut once at the equator and once at the meridian: eight bricks. On the equator or the meridian itself the number is 0 and its letter drops: 1r-0w1, 1r-1s0.
When two groups would wear the same name, both go one tier deeper. Ethan: “no, both descend. I defer to consistency.” When a small group would wear its own parent’s name, only the small one descends: “hmmmmmm… good idea actually.” Serials count arrivals within one group’s run at a name, and a name held before by other groups adds a leading zero per earlier holder, so the founder is always the 1 of its run: bare, then -01, then -001.
The gold returned with it. “we can bring back gold glow now too. people who share the same address as the lowest tier can glow gold together.” A shared ray from the origin stayed a relation worth marking, but differently: “I dont want the rays to run through the origin, just between the two constellations, and yes no line for lowest tier is good.” Same lowest group glows; same ray gets a line; “I want both.”
Building it up one arrival at a time broke. A newcomer could drag a small group’s center off the two who founded it; they fell out, paired again right beside it, and merged straight back in, forever. Refusing any join that would push someone out stopped it, and so did making it stricter to get in than to stay in, but every version left a group saying something untrue about who stood where, and for a moment the whole automatic approach looked hopeless: “I see all the problems with every possibility and am starting to think the only possible build is manual grouping and drawn airspace.” What held was dropping arrival from the grouping altogether: “make sure the center prioritizes forming between the pair with the least distance between each other, at any time, not based on arrival.” The groups are recomputed from where everyone stands, so the same sky always gives the same groups and nothing can chase anything. Which group forms first was the last question: “have it prioritize the tightest clustering, ie the lowest mean of distance between groupmates” — the union whose members end up closest together on average always forms first, and for two lone worlds that is just the closest pair. Arrival now decides only who founded a group. The one untruth left runs in a single direction: a world can stand inside a group’s region without being in it, when taking it in would have pushed a member out, and it is always the world that would have loosened the group most. No member ever stands outside its group.