Manifest Template

Version 1.0 · Spring 2026 · The structure every commissioned work carries into the Archive

Every work in the NB Idea Archive arrives with a manifest like this. The fields below are the canonical structure. A real entry replaces every [placeholder] with a verifiable value.

The manifest is published alongside the work and updated only by appending — never by overwriting. If a piece is corrected after publication, the original version remains visible and the correction is logged with its own date and reason.

The fields

Work ID

NBI-YYYY-S{1-4}-{SLUG}-NN

Permanent identifier. NBI = Nbidea. Year. Season number. Project slug (e.g. LISBON, KYOTO, RAMADAN). Sequence inside the project.

Title

[final title given by the author at delivery]

Author

[Real name] · [City, Country] · [year of birth] · [one-line professional history]

Public attribution is required. Pseudonyms are accepted only with verifiable identity held in escrow by the studio.

Commissioned by

NB Idea · Pass Issue [NN] · [Season] [Year] · paid USD [amount]

Brief

/archive/briefs/[work-id].md

The original brief from the editor at the moment of commission. Permanently linked, never edited after sending.

Drafted

[start date] to [end date] · [N] revisions

Editorial exchange

/archive/exchange/[work-id].md

The full editor–author exchange across drafts. Comments, pushbacks, agreements, refusals. Published with author consent.

Delivered

[date] · [N] words · author signed ([PGP fingerprint])

Rights

Author retains copyright. NB Idea holds non-exclusive Pass + corpus license. Author may refuse any downstream licensee at any time.

The default rights stack. Variations from the default are listed explicitly.

Format

[language] prose · printed in Pass Issue [NN] · digital archive permanent

License history

[empty until first downstream license]

Each downstream license is logged here. Public. Includes licensee, scope, date, fee paid to author.

What is not in the manifest

The author's home address, family, identifying photographs, and any other private detail. The manifest establishes professional provenance, not biographical exposure. The author is identifiable enough to be paid and credited; not so identifiable that the manifest becomes a privacy risk.

What changes after publication

Only one field can be appended after publication: License history. Everything else is fixed at delivery. If the work is corrected, the corrected version appears alongside the original with its own dated note.

Why this matters

A piece of writing is not just text. It is the trace of a specific human, working under specific conditions, on a specific brief, for a specific fee, through a specific number of drafts. The trace is the difference between a sentence and a sentence-with-substrate.

The manifest does not produce the substrate. The substrate is the human author. The manifest is what the rest of us — readers, archivists, future trainers of language models — can know about that human's process without intruding on the human themselves.

Manifest format v1.0 · Subject to revision before Issue 01. Authors are consulted on revisions. Existing entries are never altered — only future entries follow newer formats, with version numbers logged on each.