Observe
Begin with accumulated form and ask what present organization might preserve.
Start here
Start with the relation. Then examine the forms it leaves behind.
Fractalish begins with accumulated form: present organization that may preserve a partial receipt of prior transitions, constraints, persistence, release, and history.
The shortest version
Form is accumulated consequence. Geometry is one way of measuring the receipt. Fractalish seeks the generative grammar upstream of accumulated form.
A form may preserve evidence of what happened before it, but it does not automatically preserve the whole history or explain itself. The representation you choose matters because every instrument both reveals and loses structure.
The working cycle
Represent
Use geometry, morphology, topology, spectra, graphs, dynamics, traces, or another instrument.
Account
Name the preserved relation and the residue left outside the representation.
Test
Infer, predict, perturb, reconstruct, and preserve uncertainty when the evidence does not close.
The important limit
Description reads the receipt. Intervention tests the grammar.
Similarity is not mechanism. A description may be useful, but the stronger claim is earned when changing a suspected formative or maintaining relation changes future reachability as predicted.
Where evidence does not justify closure, Fractalish preserves HOLD rather than manufacturing an answer.