What a piece is, why it exists, and what it belongs to

STATUS: IN REVIEW · written 11 September 2026 after your walk of the first sitting, and corrected the same day after you asked what "the August groups" are and whether the app adds to the confusion. The first half records what you have already ruled. The last section is what the foundations sitting asks. The October update below records the foundations answers. Numerical observations retain their September dates and are not a current inventory.

You asked a question on the first sitting that you have asked on four walks before it: is "a brand film, a press release, a key visual" a content type, or a content category? And is Documentation & Technical a category, or part of a campaign? This page answers it from what you have already ruled and what the library actually holds, so the next sitting can start from here.

The short answer

A piece answers several different questions, and each one has its own answer. The trouble has always been two words doing the work of six.

The question	What it's called	An example	Is it decided?
What is it?	Content type	a launch film, a logo, a system card	The list is. You approved it in August, and your first sitting adds five words to it. A few of those words still need a written definition.
Why does it exist?	Marketing intent	product marketing, brand marketing, research and thought leadership	Yes, in July. The library's own answers are copied, not judged, so treat its numbers as a rough guide (see below).
What job does it do?	Content role	to announce, to explain, to prove, to educate	Yes, in July. A piece can do more than one.
What is it part of?	A grouping	a product launch campaign, DevDay 2025, OpenAI's brand identity program	Yes. A campaign is a container you file pieces in.
What job does it do in that grouping?	Its place in the grouping	the hero, a teaser	Yes. It belongs to the link between the piece and the grouping.
Which version is it?	A variant	the 15-second cut, the 9:16 cut, the logo without its wordmark	Yes. A cut is a separately browsable version of the film, not another underlying work.

When you say "category", your own words point more than one way. The July model used it for why a piece exists. In your walks you have used it for the headings on the list of types, and for the grouping a piece is in. The foundations sitting asks which one you mean, and it adds two more: the kind of grouping, and the type of campaign the old field mostly recorded. Your October follow-up accepts keeping these concepts separate, without adding a mandatory content-category parent above them. Heading names and exact routing remain separate reviews.

Two more facts sit on every piece — where it ran and whose it is — but they are not part of this confusion, so they are left out here.

Your own sentences, split up

This is how the Atlas reads the three things you said.

What you said	What it is	Why it exists	What it's part of	Its place there
"our Hero Film for the Product Launch Campaign"	a launch film	product marketing	the product launch campaign	the hero
"our Logo for OpenAI with and without wordmark"	a logo	brand marketing	OpenAI's brand identity program	the main logo
"our hero image on the Product Page"	a key visual	product marketing	no grouping, unless a campaign includes it	none

In the second row, "with" and "without the wordmark" are two variants of the same logo. The third row carries another fact: the image is the main picture of that page. A piece sitting inside another piece is covered further down.

Is Documentation & Technical a category?

It depends which of the three meanings you intend, and it is worth seeing all three:

• As a heading on the list of types — yes. Documentation & Technical is one of those headings. It holds specification, system card and white paper, so the list is easier to read.
• As why a piece exists — no. The pieces under that heading carry their own intent: in the library today, 125 of them say research and thought leadership, and 20 say education and support.
• As the grouping a piece belongs to — no. A heading is not a container; a campaign is.

You ruled on 4 August that research pieces — model cards, technical reports, white papers — are kept and searchable, but never appear when someone browses creative work. Almost none of them belong to a campaign today. They could. A system card published alongside a new model can be linked to that model's launch, and neither its type nor its intent changes.

Why this kept coming back

You settled it in July: the category that means why a piece exists is not above type. The two sit side by side on the same piece, and the thing that feels like "above" is the grouping a piece belongs to. You ratified that, but the ruling never reached the record of decisions, and the old word stayed alive in four places.

The library still fills in the old category field. The step that decides how a piece gets analysed still reads it, so it can't be removed yet. The intent field that replaced it does exist, but every value in it was copied across from the old field rather than decided afresh. 6,581 pieces have an intent, 7,357 have none, and four of the twelve intents have never been used.

The app shows the old word two ways. When you open a piece, its details list the old field under the label "Category". And the browse menu item "Categories" opens a page titled "Marketing Intent".

The headings on the list of types are named like reasons. These are what I had called "the August groups" — the twelve headings on the recommendation page, the last of which is a holding heading for types not yet placed: Campaign · Brand & Identity · Product & Feature · Users & Customers · Partnership & Creator · Education & Support · Corporate Communication · Documentation & Technical · Events & Experiential · Retail & Commerce · Interactive & Digital Experience · Still Open After Your Amendments. You renamed them on 16 August ("Brand & Campaign should probably just be campaign"). Most of those names describe why a piece exists, but each heading is tied to the type, so every piece of one type lands under the same heading.

A heading can say "a white paper is documentation". It can never say "this social post is brand work and that one is support" — and the difference is real, because social posts turn up under all eight intents in use. The heading called Campaign also shares its name with the container.

The pages you walk never showed the ruling. It lived in a July specification and never reached the page in front of you. So each walk asked again.

A piece inside another piece — you have been here before

A grouping holds whole pieces: a campaign, a brand identity program, a project, an event or season. A piece inside another piece is something different, and it has come up three times.

• On 21 July you said: "one page of a six-page PDF of a model card, that's not content."
• On 4 August you ruled that a moment is a video-only idea, and that sections of a long page or regions of an image, if ever needed, will get their own word.
• Your model-card example, traced step by step through the Atlas, found the charts inside the card had nowhere to go.

The library already notes 3,318 pieces that sit inside a web page, such as a picture or a video on it (counted again on 12 September). You have now settled the browsing boundary: keep every captured document page accessible inside its parent, and make selected useful parts independently browsable with a link back. The non-video name and exact storage still need the later definition and implementation work.

The infographics, as the library holds them

You kept the word for designed data graphics only. The 62 pieces that carry it today came from two places, and neither place holds only one kind of thing:

• 47 came from the LinkedIn ad library. Forty-six are numbered pages from six ads that each ran a whole document as a sequence of images. Twenty-two of those pages come from one report and fifteen from another. Your screenshot shows a cover and two pages of text and tables. The forty-seventh is a single ad image, not a page. Some of these pages are designed data graphics; many are simply pages of a report.
• 15 came from elsewhere. Eleven were taken from the company's own web pages: research charts, diagrams, and five images that are only page decoration. Two came from newsroom feeds and two from Instagram.

The infographics you meant are spread through both groups, not sitting in a pile of their own. So keeping the word means looking at each piece again, not moving one group.

What the foundations sitting settled

Your October answers settle all four foundations questions. Content types, groupings, type-list headings and distribution stay separate, without a mandatory content-category parent. Headings belong on the list of types. Captured pages stay accessible inside their document, with selected useful parts independently browsable and linked back. A photograph links directly to the work it depicts while keeping its own identity. The decision record preserves the reasoning.

The original sitting is kept as the page you answered. Its earlier questions about those points no longer need new answers. These are model decisions; production implementation is still owed.

The agreed separation of “category”

Keep content type, purpose, grouping and distribution separate. Use headings to organize the type list, and views to help people browse related work. Do not require every piece to fit beneath a new content-category parent. Hierarchy is useful when it narrows the same idea, such as one kind of animation inside animation. A campaign and a launch film are different things joined by membership.

For your launch example, the film, announcement page and model card can belong to the same launch. The page can contain a hero image, and a useful graphic from the model card can be found independently while linking back to the report. None needs to become the same content type. A campaign can be recognized later, after those pieces have been collected.

Retail can describe where work appears; a retail experience can also be the subject of a project. Keep those facts explicit rather than making every retail piece one kind of content. Your historical channel tables are useful coverage, but their columns mix delivery methods, business models, audiences, devices and piece types.

You confirmed this separation in the follow-up question: “Yes—use these separate concepts”. Heading names, channel definitions, exact routing and the main navigation remain later decisions. The browsing sitting has since been answered: guided entrances, versions and whole-piece types are recorded in the October decisions.

Remaining implementation checks and later vocabulary reviews:

• Implementation of the settled storage distinctions. Several whole-piece types with one leading are approved. Versions, publications and captures remain distinct; actual storage and consumers still need verification.
• Definitions for the words the prompts use: system card against model card, what makes an infographic designed, and whether a vlog that is also a user story leads with vlog.
• Names, including the word people see for "category" and what the headings are called. A second set of headings was drafted in August, named for the shape of a piece: film and video, static design, editorial and written, digital experience, physical and spatial, toolkit and system. It could not place 22 of the 64 types in one shape, because those types take whatever shape the piece has, and it marked five more as uncertain.
• Placement, including which heading each of four words sits under — behind the scenes, vlog, event photo and infographic. The fifth word, system card, already has your answer: Documentation & Technical.

Last reviewed 4 October 2026.

Earlier dated measurements remain historical.