Project Atlas — Internal Development Notes

Internal status: Concept containment / design record
Project label: Project Atlas
Technical label: ACAS-A1 — Alternative Civilizational Accounting System
Subsystem: NeuroSaeculum — Post-v1.0 Expansion
Public status: Do not publish yet
Working posture: Complementary diagnostic framework, not a replacement for official national accounts

Table of Contents

1. Working Definition

Project Atlas is a proposed NeuroSaeculum-aligned civilizational accounting framework designed to supplement conventional economic measures such as GDP and the System of National Accounts (SNA).

Its purpose is to distinguish between economic activity that strengthens civilizational capacity and activity that merely increases measured output while shifting costs, accumulating load, consuming future capacity, or repairing damage that the system itself helped create.

Project Atlas is not intended to replace GDP or SNA. It is intended to ask questions those systems were not designed to answer.

Core framing:

GDP is not wrong. It is incomplete.

Core diagnostic contrast:

GDP measures activity. DRPI measures useful production. CLF measures the load required to sustain it.

Core public hook, subject to later refinement:

GDP can’t tell the difference between an economy that is producing and one that is consuming its own foundations.

More precise version:

GDP can measure an economy getting bigger while missing whether that growth is building future capacity or consuming the systems that make future production possible.

2. Why This Exists

Internal-language note: This section uses diagnostic shorthand for internal development. Several phrases below are intentionally sharper than future public language should be. Public-facing versions will need more neutral wording, especially around distribution, depletion, asset ownership, and extraction.

Conventional GDP can rise under conditions that do not necessarily improve civilizational health, household stability, institutional resilience, or future productive capacity.

GDP can increase when:

households spend more simply to maintain the same standard of living;
disaster recovery spending rises after preventable or system-amplified damage;
illness, insecurity, crime, and defensive expenditures expand;
debt-driven consumption masks declining real stability;
speculative financial activity increases measured income without improving productive capacity;
ecological depletion is converted into current output;
labor insecurity rises while corporate profits increase;
asset inflation enriches owners while non-owners experience higher maintenance burdens;
future capacity is consumed to preserve present appearance.

Project Atlas exists because a civilization can appear wealthier on the official dashboard while becoming more strained, brittle, unequal, and dependent on hidden maintenance burdens.

The central question is:

Is the system producing durable civilizational capacity, or merely increasing measured activity while accumulating load?

3. Relationship to Existing Metrics

Project Atlas should be framed as a complementary diagnostic framework, not a replacement for existing national accounting systems or well-being measures.

It should explicitly acknowledge that GDP was not designed to measure total human welfare, civilizational health, ecological sustainability, or distributional fairness. Many critiques of GDP are already well established.

Project Atlas should therefore avoid claiming novelty at the level of “GDP is incomplete.” That claim is not new.

The distinctive claim is more specific:

Existing accounting systems often fail to distinguish between output that builds future capacity and output that draws down the maintenance layers that make future production possible.

Project Atlas should eventually be positioned in relation to:

GDP and SNA;
Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI);
Human Development Index (HDI);
Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI);
OECD Better Life Index;
Gross National Happiness;
distributional national accounts;
ecological accounting;
household burden and cost-of-living metrics;
sustainability and resilience indicators.

Project Atlas should not pretend these efforts do not exist. Its credibility will depend partly on showing what it adds.

4. Prior Art and Differentiation

A dedicated prior-art review is required before public release.

The internal question is not merely:

How is GDP flawed?

The more important question is:

What does Project Atlas measure that existing post-GDP, welfare, sustainability, and distributional frameworks do not already measure adequately?

Preliminary differentiation hypothesis:

GPI and related frameworks often adjust welfare or progress.
HDI and similar measures compare development outcomes.
Distributional accounts show who receives income and wealth.
Ecological accounts measure depletion and sustainability.
Project Atlas aims to measure the relationship between productive output, maintenance burden, load transfer, future-capacity depletion, and civilizational stress.

The distinctive NS contribution is not simply that GDP misses well-being. It is that GDP can misclassify load-bearing activity as prosperity.

Prior-art work must eventually answer:

What does DRPI add to existing adjusted-production or welfare metrics?
What does CLF add to existing stress, sustainability, inequality, or vulnerability indices?
Where does Project Atlas overlap with GPI?
Where does Project Atlas intentionally diverge from GPI?
Which components are already measured elsewhere?
Which components require new classification logic?
Which claims should be softened because prior frameworks already cover them?

May 26, 2026 – U.N. commission released a 31-metric dashboard covering peace and human rights, sustainability, quality of life, and inequality, reflecting growing mainstream recognition that GDP does not adequately measure real prosperity, resilience, or human flourishing. Relevance to Atlas: external validation that prevailing economic metrics are too narrow and that a broader civilizational accounting framework is needed, though consensus on a replacement remains unsettled.

This section should remain a placeholder until a proper literature and methodology review is completed.

5. Core Proposed Metrics: DRPI and CLF

Project Atlas currently proposes two primary metrics.

DRPI — Domestic Real Production Index

DRPI is a proposed measure of useful domestic production after adjusting for activities that increase GDP without necessarily increasing durable productive capacity.

DRPI is intended to distinguish between:

activity and production;
repair and advancement;
extraction and value creation;
maintenance burden and discretionary prosperity;
real capacity-building and future-capacity drawdown.

Preliminary DRPI areas may include:

reclassification of core human maintenance costs;
adjustment for disaster, illness, crime, and defensive expenditures;
treatment of speculative financial churn;
debt-driven consumption corrections;
distinction between productive investment and asset-price inflation;
domestic capacity versus globalized profit capture;
durable infrastructure and human-capital formation.

DRPI is relatively portable. A version of DRPI could exist within existing post-GDP, GPI-adjacent, distributional, or national-accounting reform traditions without requiring full NS fluency.

CLF — Civilizational Load Factor

CLF is a proposed measure of systemic load carried by households, institutions, ecology, labor systems, debt structures, and future capacity in order to sustain measured output.

CLF is more strongly dependent on NeuroSaeculum architecture than DRPI.

It draws from concepts such as:

load vs. stress vs. shock;
load transfer;
latent versus visible load;
buffer exhaustion;
delayed feedback;
threshold proximity;
maintenance burden;
phase instability;
future-capacity cannibalization.

A generic version of CLF could be described as a “systemic stress index,” but that would miss the distinctive NS logic. CLF is intended to measure not just stress, but the hidden load required to keep visible output functioning.

CLF should therefore remain internal until the relevant NS vocabulary is stable and publicly legible enough to support it.

6. NS Dependency Gradient

Project Atlas is not equally dependent on NeuroSaeculum at every layer.

Stability criteria

Because Project Atlas depends on upstream NS concepts, the word “stable” must not be treated as a vague impression.

For NS Load Mechanics, preliminary stability means:

the core primitives — buffer, load, stress, shock, threshold, transfer, lag, latency, and conversion — have been publicly published;
their definitions have survived at least one external or adversarial review cycle;
no major definitional changes are expected before they are used as infrastructure for CLF.

For CLF publication readiness, preliminary stability means:

the load primitives used by CLF have settled;
their relationship to measurable economic burdens is documented;
public-facing explanations can introduce them without requiring full NS fluency.

More portable components

DRPI is largely portable. It can be explained in relation to existing critiques of GDP and alternative accounting traditions. NS sharpens it, but does not make it conceptually possible.

More NS-dependent components

CLF is deeply dependent on NS Load Mechanics, Structural Dynamics, threshold behavior, maintenance-burden logic, and load-transfer analysis.

If Load Mechanics or Structural Dynamics are significantly revised, DRPI may survive with limited changes. CLF may not.

This creates a development dependency:

CLF should not be publicly released until the relevant NS architecture is stable enough to support it.

It also creates a communication dependency:

Project Atlas will be only as legible as the NS concepts it relies on.

Because Atlas adds economic measurement complexity on top of NS complexity, its public version will require a standalone on-ramp that does not assume prior NS fluency.

7. Measurement Tractability

The credibility of Project Atlas depends on whether DRPI and CLF can eventually be calculated from defensible data.

A conceptually elegant metric that cannot be computed, or that depends too heavily on subjective classification, will be vulnerable to dismissal as ideological rather than diagnostic.

This section must eventually classify each proposed component into one of several categories:

Directly measurable — public data exists and maps reasonably well to the concept.
Proxy-measurable — public data exists but only approximates the concept.
Judgment-dependent — classification requires contestable methodological choices.
Currently conceptual — important to the framework but not yet measurable with adequate data.
Excluded for now — too speculative or too difficult to measure in the current version.

Key tractability questions:

What data sources are available?
Are they public, stable, and reproducible?
Can a critic reproduce the calculation?
Which adjustments are formulaic?
Which adjustments require judgment calls?
How do we avoid double-counting?
How do we distinguish maintenance costs from ordinary consumption?
How do we distinguish legitimate returns to capital from extraction?
How do we distinguish productive finance from speculative churn?
How do we prevent the metric from encoding predetermined ideological conclusions?

Core discipline:

If someone who disagrees with the civilizational conclusions cannot compute roughly the same result, then Project Atlas does not yet have a metric. It has an argument.

8. Demonstration Dataset Requirement

Project Atlas must eventually include a defensible demonstration dataset.

The demonstration dataset is not optional. It is the bridge between conceptual critique and measurement credibility.

Minimum requirement:

Project Atlas should demonstrate at least one historical period in which conventional GDP was rising or appeared healthy while DRPI was flat or declining, CLF was rising, and the period was later followed by measurable civilizational stress indicators.

The purpose is not to prove simple causality. The purpose is to test whether DRPI and CLF detect structural strain that GDP fails to reveal.

Expected pattern:

Indicator	Expected behavior in test case
GDP	Rising or apparently healthy
DRPI	Flat, weak, or declining
CLF	Rising
Later stress indicators	Household strain, institutional stress, stagnation, debt crisis, political instability, social stress, or other measurable symptoms

A falsifiability test that does not reference actual data is only a promissory note. The demonstration dataset gives falsifiability somewhere to land.

9. Candidate Historical Test Cases

Candidate test cases should be nominated and recorded before DRPI and CLF measurement boundaries are locked.

This is a methodological safeguard against overfitting.

If formulas are finalized first and test cases are selected afterward, there is a risk of unconsciously tuning the metrics toward cases already expected to produce the desired pattern.

Project Atlas should therefore adopt a pre-registration-style discipline:

Candidate historical test cases must be nominated and recorded before DRPI and CLF formulas, measurement boundaries, and classification rules are finalized.

Version anchor:

Candidate historical test cases should be nominated and recorded by the end of ACAS-A1 v0.3, before v0.4 formula work begins.

Late additions may be allowed only if they are explicitly labeled as post-lock exploratory cases, not part of the original demonstration set.

Initial candidate cases:

United States, 2001–2007

Possible relevance:

GDP growth before the financial crisis;
housing bubble;
household debt expansion;
financial-sector growth;
stagnant or uneven household security;
rising systemic fragility before collapse.

Japan, post-1990

Possible relevance:

asset-bubble aftermath;
long stagnation;
debt overhang;
demographic stress;
questions about productive capacity versus maintenance burden.

United Kingdom, austerity period

Possible relevance:

official recovery narratives versus public-sector strain;
household stress;
institutional degradation;
regional divergence;
weakened maintenance systems.

Ireland, pre-2008

Possible relevance:

strong GDP growth before financial crisis;
real estate and financial exposure;
already-recognized GDP distortion issues;
useful credibility case because mainstream economists already acknowledge measurement problems.

Greece, pre-2009

Possible relevance:

GDP and eurozone integration masking debt and institutional fragility;
later fiscal crisis;
politically sensitive but potentially analytically strong.

Ireland and Greece may be especially useful early cases because some of their GDP/accounting distortions are already widely acknowledged. If Project Atlas detects known distortions before applying its tools to more contested cases, that strengthens credibility.

10. Risk and Safety Framing

Project Atlas is sensitive because measurement systems define reality for policy, investment, legitimacy, and accountability.

A framework that says some measured growth is actually load transfer, extraction, repair spending, or future-cannibalization may threaten institutions and interests that benefit from the current dashboard.

The main danger is not direct suppression. The more likely danger is premature delegitimization.

Possible attacks:

“This is anti-market.”
“This is not serious economics.”
“GDP was never meant to measure well-being.”
“This is just redistribution politics in technical language.”
“The classifications are ideological.”
“The metric is designed to produce the author’s preferred conclusion.”
“This reinvents GPI with new branding.”
“This is too interdisciplinary to be rigorous.”

Public posture should therefore remain restrained:

GDP is useful, but incomplete.

Avoid public claims such as:

“GDP is a lie.”
“Project Atlas replaces GDP.”
“This is the first honest accounting system.”
“This proves the system is corrupt.”
“This exposes capitalism.”
“This should govern policy directly.”

Internal shorthand may be sharper than public language, but internal documents should flag which terms are not ready for public use.

Potentially risky internal terms:

false positives;
disaster spending;
illness spending;
speculative churn;
extraction;
foundation-cannibalization;
load transfer;
future cannibalization.

These may remain useful internally, but public equivalents may need to be more neutral:

measurement scope limits;
repair expenditures;
health-system burden;
low-productivity financial activity;
unequal capture of gains;
depletion of future capacity;
transferred maintenance burden.

11. Scope Control

Project Atlas must not begin as an attempt to “build an entirely new accounting system” in full.

That is too large and creates unnecessary exposure.

Better working scope:

Develop a prototype civilizational accounting framework that demonstrates how GDP can be supplemented by production-quality and load metrics.

Project Atlas should proceed in stages:

Internal development notes.
ACAS-A1 conceptual skeleton.
Prior-art review.
Measurement tractability review.
DRPI conceptual prototype.
CLF conceptual prototype.
Candidate dataset pre-registration.
Prototype formulas.
Demonstration dataset.
Steelman critique.
Revised technical specification.
Public on-ramp materials.
Public working paper or explainer.

Scope ceiling:

Project Atlas does not initially attempt to:

replace GDP or SNA;
produce official national accounts;
adjudicate all economic value;
become a policy mandate;
rank nations publicly;
produce a live dashboard;
name and shame institutions;
provide investment advice;
become a political platform.

It begins as a diagnostic supplement.

12. Sequencing Opportunities and Constraints

Project Atlas has both constraints and opportunities based on the different maturity levels of DRPI and CLF.

Constraint: CLF depends on NS public legibility

CLF should not go public before NS Load Mechanics and related concepts are stable and accessible enough to support it.

If CLF is released before that, it may appear to be an invented stress index rather than a measurement expression of an existing diagnostic architecture.

Opportunity: DRPI may have an earlier standalone path

Because DRPI is more portable, it may eventually be publishable as an independent or semi-independent contribution to post-GDP accounting conversations.

This could allow Project Atlas to:

enter an existing discourse without requiring full NS onboarding;
establish credibility through prior-art engagement;
test public framing;
clarify the production-quality side before introducing CLF;
prepare the ground for full Atlas architecture later.

This does not mean DRPI should be published now. It means the internal plan should preserve the option.

Possible sequencing:

Build DRPI internally.
Compare it to GPI and related frameworks.
Publish DRPI only if it can stand independently.
Keep CLF internal until NS Load Mechanics is legible enough.
Later unite DRPI and CLF under full Project Atlas.

13. Documentation Authority

ACAS-A1 is the authoritative internal specification.

Public Project Atlas materials are derived artifacts.

This means:

public explainers derive from the current stable ACAS-A1 version;
articles must not redefine terms casually;
diagrams must match the technical specification;
public metaphors must not contradict the measurement model;
any major public page should be checked against the current spec before publication;
if the spec changes materially, derived materials must be audited.

Governance rule:

The ACAS-A1 technical specification is authoritative. Public Project Atlas materials are explanatory derivatives and must remain traceable to the current stable ACAS-A1 release.

This prevents the public narrative from drifting away from the framework.

14. Versioning and Change Control

ACAS-A1 should be maintained as a versioned technical specification from the beginning.

Stability criteria

For ACAS-A1, preliminary stability means:

the major classification categories are defined;
DRPI and CLF formulas or formula families have not changed materially across two consecutive development passes;
the demonstration dataset methodology is reproducible;
changes are being logged through version control rather than absorbed informally.

A “stable draft” does not mean final. It means the document has stopped changing at the level of basic architecture and can safely support derived public materials.

Suggested early version path:

Version	Meaning
v0.1	Conceptual skeleton: definitions, scope, candidate components
v0.2	Prior-art and differentiation pass
v0.3	Measurement tractability pass: candidate data sources and proxies; candidate test case nomination and pre-registration lock
v0.4	Prototype DRPI and CLF formulas
v0.5	Demonstration dataset draft
v0.6	First falsifiability and steelman critique pass
v0.7	Revised formulas and classification rules
v0.8	Public on-ramp draft, still internal
v0.9	Public-release candidate
v1.0	First stable public technical specification

Breaking changes

The following should be treated as breaking or major changes requiring version updates and audit of derived materials:

material change to DRPI formula;
material change to CLF formula;
redefinition of load, stress, shock, maintenance, real production, extraction, or false-positive activity;
change to classification boundaries;
replacement of major data sources;
change to demonstration dataset methodology;
change to interpretation rules;
change to whether a component is included, excluded, or treated as proxy-only.

Non-breaking refinements

The following may be handled as minor changes or changelog entries:

wording clarifications;
additional examples;
improved citations;
caveats;
formatting;
diagrams that do not alter meaning;
minor proxy improvements that do not change metric logic.

Rule:

Any public-facing Atlas artifact must be traceable to a stable ACAS-A1 version.

15. Connections to NeuroSaeculum Architecture

Project Atlas is a post-v1.0 economic diagnostic extension of NeuroSaeculum.

It should not be treated as a core dependency for NS v1.0.

Relevant NS connections:

Load Mechanics

Project Atlas operationalizes load in the economic measurement domain.

CLF is especially dependent on Load Mechanics because it measures hidden strain, transferred burden, latent stress, buffer exhaustion, and future-capacity drawdown.

Structural Dynamics

Project Atlas connects visible output to underlying structural movement: accumulation, transfer, latency, threshold proximity, and conversion.

Civic Topology

Project Atlas can provide quantitative support for causal chains involving housing burden, healthcare burden, labor insecurity, debt, financialization, ecological depletion, and institutional stress.

Hidden Circuitry

Project Atlas may eventually connect economic load to stress, trust, motivation, legitimacy, and narrative failure.

First Foundation

Project Atlas may eventually help identify where institutional patterns are needed to reduce load transfer, restore feedback, or protect maintenance systems.

CivMMI

Project Atlas may eventually support maturity assessment by showing whether a civilization can detect and correct measurement blind spots before they become systemic failures.

CT Monitor / SDT

Project Atlas may eventually provide quantitative context for CT Monitor logs and Structured Diagnostic Triage records, especially when economic growth narratives conflict with rising stress signals.

16. Public Legibility Constraint

Project Atlas cannot assume public fluency in NeuroSaeculum.

The public on-ramp must explain the problem in ordinary language before introducing technical concepts.

Bad public starting point:

CLF measures hidden civilizational load through NS Load Mechanics.

Better public starting point:

A country can grow on paper while drawing down the systems that make future growth possible.

Even better Atlas-specific version:

GDP can’t tell whether growth is building future capacity or consuming the foundations that make future production possible.

Public materials should avoid requiring readers to understand the whole NS architecture before they understand the core measurement problem.

The public bridge should move through stages:

GDP measures activity.
Not all activity is durable production.
Some measured growth is repair, depletion, extraction, or shifted burden.
A healthier dashboard would distinguish capacity-building output from foundation-consuming output.
Project Atlas explores how to make that distinction visible.

17. Naming and Public Branding

Internal technical label:

ACAS-A1 — Alternative Civilizational Accounting System

Public-facing project name:

Project Atlas

Possible public phrases:

GDP is not wrong. It is incomplete.
Measuring production, not just activity.
Measuring load, not just growth.
The missing dashboard for civilizational health.
How much of our growth is building the future, and how much is consuming it?
GDP can’t tell the difference between production and foundation-cannibalization.

Possible public page or article titles, for later use only:

GDP Is Not Wrong. It Is Incomplete.
How to Measure a Civilization Honestly.
Measuring Load, Not Just Growth.
The Real Cost of Human Maintenance.
When Growth Consumes Its Own Foundations.
Why the 21st Century Needs an Accounting Upgrade.

Avoid leading the technical project with:

Why GDP Lies.
The Truth About GDP.
Replacing GDP.
The Real Economy Exposed.
The Accounting System They Don’t Want You to See.

Those may generate attention but create unnecessary risk.

18. Publication Discipline

Project Atlas should remain internal until its core terms, metrics, formulas, data assumptions, and demonstration dataset meet explicit stability criteria and are strong enough to withstand scrutiny.

Public articles should not be used to explore the idea prematurely.

They should emerge only after:

ACAS-A1 has a stable draft;
DRPI and CLF are defined clearly;
prior-art differentiation has been addressed;
measurement tractability has been assessed;
candidate test cases have been nominated before formula lock;
at least one demonstration dataset exists;
a steelman critique has been written;
public language has been checked against the current spec;
the first intended public audience has been selected.

Audience-resolution rule:

The first intended audience must be resolved before ACAS-A1 v0.9, because economists, systems thinkers, policy staff, NS readers, and general readers require different on-ramps.

Sequencing rule:

Build the underlying framework first. Produce public-facing articles only when the substance can bear weight.

This mirrors the US Civilizational Forensics discipline: do the deep work first, then produce books, essays, or public narratives once the structure is mature.

19. Guardrails Before Public Release

Before Project Atlas moves from internal concept to public work, it should satisfy the following guardrails.

1. Prior-art review completed

Project Atlas must show awareness of GPI, HDI, IWI, OECD Better Life Index, Gross National Happiness, distributional accounts, ecological accounting, and related efforts.

2. Scope ceiling defined

Public materials must state what Project Atlas does not attempt to replace, govern, rank, or adjudicate.

3. Falsifiability tests written

Each metric should include a statement of what evidence would show it is measuring the wrong thing.

4. Demonstration dataset created

At least one historical case should show GDP appearing healthy while DRPI and CLF identify rising structural strain later reflected in measurable stress indicators.

5. Steelman critique completed

The strongest case against DRPI and CLF should be written internally before public release.

6. Public language audited

Public-facing materials must avoid claims that are stronger than the current technical spec supports.

7. Version traceability established

Each public artifact should identify or internally track which ACAS-A1 version it reflects.

8. NS dependency checked

Any public use of CLF must verify that the necessary NS concepts are sufficiently explained or linked.

20. Steelman / Critique Backlog

Before publication, Project Atlas needs a serious internal critique.

Likely critique themes:

“This is just GPI with new language.”

Response needed:

Project Atlas must show how DRPI and CLF differ from GPI and why NS load logic adds something useful.

“The classifications are ideological.”

Response needed:

Classification rules must be transparent, reproducible, and where possible based on public data rather than political preference.

“GDP was never meant to measure well-being.”

Response needed:

Project Atlas should agree. The critique is not that GDP fails its own purpose, but that public and policy discourse often use GDP as if it measured broader health.

“Useful production is subjective.”

Response needed:

DRPI must distinguish between directly measurable categories, proxy categories, and judgment-dependent categories.

“CLF is too broad.”

Response needed:

CLF must be structured, bounded, and connected to measurable load dimensions rather than becoming a general stress metaphor.

“This cannot be calculated.”

Response needed:

Measurement tractability must be addressed before public claims are made.

“This is anti-business or anti-market.”

Response needed:

Project Atlas should frame itself as a better dashboard for long-term productive capacity, not an attack on markets, firms, profit, or investment.

“This is politically motivated.”

Response needed:

Use known mainstream cases, transparent formulas, and reproducible data. Show that the metric can detect structural strain even when the case is not politically convenient.

21. Open Questions

Project Atlas should preserve the following questions for later development.

Conceptual questions

What counts as real production?
What counts as maintenance burden?
What counts as repair rather than progress?
What counts as future-capacity drawdown?
What distinguishes legitimate return on capital from extraction?
How should military spending be classified?
How should healthcare spending be classified?
How should disaster recovery spending be classified?
How should financial-sector activity be divided between productive intermediation and speculative churn?
How should housing costs be treated when they represent both shelter provision and asset inflation?

Measurement questions

Which components can be calculated from public data?
Which require proxies?
Which require judgment calls?
Which should remain excluded from early versions?
How should double-counting be avoided?
How should inflation be handled?
How should household debt be incorporated?
How should ecological depletion be incorporated?
How should globalized production and offshore labor be treated?
How should reserve-currency advantages and asymmetries be measured?

Governance questions

When is ACAS-A1 stable enough for public reference?
Should DRPI be published before CLF?
What is the minimum viable demonstration dataset?
What counts as a public-release candidate?
Who is the first intended audience: economists, systems thinkers, NS readers, policy staff, or general readers? This must be resolved before ACAS-A1 v0.9.
How much math should appear in public-facing materials?
Should Project Atlas have diagrams before formulas?
Should the first public release be a working paper, essay, explainer, or internal-to-public transition page?

Safety questions

Which phrases should remain internal-only?
Which claims are too politically exposed?
How can Project Atlas avoid being framed as anti-market?
How can it avoid sounding like a replacement for GDP?
How can it be rigorous without becoming unreadable?
How can it be accessible without becoming overclaimed?

Current Status

Project Atlas is a high-value but high-risk post-v1.0 expansion.

Its strongest contribution is not the familiar claim that GDP is incomplete. Its strongest contribution is the proposed distinction between:

activity and useful production;
growth and capacity-building;
prosperity and load transfer;
repair spending and genuine improvement;
current output and future-system drawdown.

DRPI may eventually provide a portable bridge into post-GDP accounting conversations.

CLF is the more distinctive NS contribution, but also the more fragile and dependent component.

The project should remain internal until its terms, scope, methodology, candidate test cases, versioning, and demonstration requirements are mature enough to support public-facing work.

Final discipline:

Do not publish Atlas early. Build the measurement architecture first.