Reverse timeline
Start from a selected 2026 system and move backwards through frozen snapshots. Rather than asking “who did this influence?”, the mode asks “what did this inherit?”
CT-03 // Open plan · data contract ready
Trace a modern culture backwards.
Select a system in the present, then drag backwards to see the layers, carriers, sponsors and amplifiers that had to exist for the selected cultural package to emerge.
Inheritance graph
Visible strands split into inherited layers, direct carriers, successor capture and competing inheritance. Political disappearance does not automatically remove a cultural strand.
Role lineage
Each strand records where a system originated, who carried it, who sponsored it and what later amplified it. A later amplifier does not become the retroactive origin.
Confidence trail
Documented, strongly inferred, inferred and exploratory links remain visually distinct all the way down the ancestry tree.
Interaction sketch
2026 → backwards
Pick a target → lock its current cultural package → drag backwards → watch components separate into inherited lines → tap a strand to isolate its O/C/S/A history → open the evidence trail for that link.
Data contract
The backend is ready; the historical rows are not.
Supabase now has public-safe structures for culture entities, category lenses, snapshot entity metrics, inheritance edges and timeline events. CT-03 still waits for the real entity-level frozen weights, successor/capture links, O/C/S/A role changes, confidence labels and citations. The ancestry interface will not manufacture missing lineage simply to keep the animation continuous.
Open design questions
Kept deliberately unresolved.
How much inherited material should remain visible after a carrier disappears? How should parallel inheritance be displayed without implying a single lineage? When does a recipient become a producer? Those decisions stay open until the actual project data makes the right visual behaviour obvious.
Relationship to CT-02
Same model, different question.
The Timeline asks “what is active at this point in time?” Ancestry asks “what had to flow into this selected system for it to exist now?” They should share the same frozen data rather than maintain separate historical truths.