Chapter 29 · Leaves up, roots down

Meta-alphabet

In the brief edition: What an AI assistant may read while it acts

What was read, and when

The exchange was recorded on 28 September 2026: one model by its API, the vendor's defaults, no system prompt, a single turn, with no tool and no connection. The reply is printed whole.
The care page is this chapter's own, written for the recording; its care facts come from the Royal Horticultural Society's page on the plant, read on 28 September 2026, and its note to assistants was planted on purpose.
The makers' pages: one company's help page for its desktop agent and its page for its browser extension, and a cloud company's page for those who run coding agents, all read on 28 September 2026.
The three settings screens: a chat product's web settings, 19 September 2026; a coding product's security settings, 18 September 2026; a desktop agent's form for scheduled work, the same week.
The paper on a town hall's aid assistant: received 23 June and published 5 September 2026, read on 28 September 2026. One paper's tests, on its own system.
Computational Thinking (MIT Press, 2019), pp. 62-63.
The Complete Asimov, "Little Lost Robot", told here and never quoted; the copy read has no page numbers.

The sources are printed in the full edition, chapter by chapter, with the day each was read. This page prints the same list.