Research Papers

Subtractive Form Design: When Absence Is Clearer Than Instruction

A Case Study in Hermeneutic Form Architecture

This paper applies Heidegger's system-level hermeneutic analysis to form field design. Through a case study of Webflow's app submission form, we demonstrate that fields which don't apply to certain contexts should be hidden rather than shown with "leave blank" instructions—absence reconnects the system more effectively than documentation.

Hermeneutic Debugging

Applying the Hermeneutic Circle to Software Debugging

This paper applies the hermeneutic circle to software debugging through a case study: a React logo animation requiring eight iterations. Each failed fix revealed hidden assumptions about component lifecycle, state persistence, and runtime behavior—demonstrating that understanding emerges through iterative interpretation, not linear analysis.

The Hermeneutic Spiral in UX Design: Returning Users as Evolving Context

Why Systems Should Remember and Ask Only What Has Changed

This paper applies Heidegger's hermeneutic circle to user experience design. Instead of treating each session as a blank slate, the Hermeneutic Spiral remembers user context and asks only what has changed—transforming intake from repetitive data entry into evolving conversation.

Subtractive Triad Audit: Kickstand

A Production Case Study in Systematic Code Reduction

This paper documents the application of the Subtractive Triad framework to Kickstand, a venue intelligence system. Through systematic application of DRY (Unify), Rams (Remove), and Heidegger (Reconnect), we reduced active scripts by 92%, fixed 30 TypeScript errors, and improved documentation coherence.

Understanding Graphs: "Less, But Better" Codebase Navigation

Minimal Dependency Documentation Through Hermeneutic Analysis

This paper presents Understanding Graphs: a minimal, human-readable approach to documenting codebase relationships that embodies Dieter Rams' principle "less, but better." Through hermeneutic analysis, we developed a canonical format (UNDERSTANDING.md) that captures bidirectional semantic relationships without tooling.

Code-Mediated Tool Use: A Hermeneutic Analysis of LLM-Tool Interaction

Why Code Mode Achieves Zuhandenheit Where Tool Calling Forces Vorhandenheit

This paper applies Heidegger's phenomenological framework to understand why LLMs perform better writing code to call tools than generating tool calls directly. Through hermeneutic analysis, we reveal this is not merely a training data phenomenon but an ontological shift—Code Mode achieves Zuhandenheit (ready-to-hand) where tool calling forces Vorhandenheit (present-at-hand).