Introduction

The Problem

Documentation drifts from reality. Code comments lie. Runbooks rot. The knowledge that humans need to operate systems exists in a perpetual state of staleness because the artifacts that describe systems are separate from the artifacts that implement them.

This separation creates what we term the integration tax: every boundary crossing between documentation, code, and data requires synchronization that organizations pay forever. "Which doc covers this function?" requires a join across systems that don't share a query language. "What code implements this runbook?" requires manual correlation. "Who approved this config change?" requires audit trail reconstruction.

The Observation

The Observation

The integration tax exists because we optimized each stream for its primary access pattern and forgot they share computational structure underneath. A binary is a stream of instructions with holes (relocations) that the linker fills with addresses. A query plan is a stream of operators with holes that the executor fills with data. A document is a stream of tokens with holes (fences) that the renderer fills with output.

These streams exhibit strong structural parallels. The linking step is always there. The stream with holes that get filled at resolution time—it appears repeatedly across domains, suggesting shared computational invariants rather than mere coincidence.

The Thesis

Structured text with sufficient expressiveness constitutes a programming language. The sufficient expressiveness is: hierarchical organization (sections, nesting), executable regions (fences with semantics), reference mechanism (links, includes, slots), and transformation pipeline (middleware composition).

We present Wanderland, a system that treats this thesis seriously. Documents execute. Navigation is query execution. The cache implements compilation stages. Provenance tracks human verification inline.

Contributions

Contributions

• Structural Parallels: We identify and exploit structural parallels between document processing, compilation, and query execution—enabling design patterns from one domain to transfer to others. Formal proof of isomorphism remains future work.
• Authoring-Time Structure: Unlike systems that extract graphs from documents, Wanderland imposes computable structure at authoring time, eliminating reconstruction.
• Inline Provenance: A three-state verification system (🔴→🟡→🟢) with hash-based drift detection, deployed and working where current research remains exploratory.
• Homoiconic MCP: Tool definitions collapse into the documentation that describes them—no synchronization required.
• Production Validation: The system operates real infrastructure, demonstrating viability beyond research prototype.

North

slots:
- slug: wanderland-paper
  context:
  - Parent paper node
  - Paper parent to introduction section

East

slots:
- slug: streams-all-the-way-down
  context:
  - The realization that sparked the architecture
- slug: structural-isomorphism-thesis
  context:
  - Formal statement of the thesis
- slug: wanderland-paper-related-work
  context:
  - Section sequence

West

slots:
- slug: wanderland-paper-abstract
  context:
  - Previous section
  - Section sequence

Provenance

Document

• Status: 🔴 Unverified

Fences

wanderland-paper-introduction-north-fence-0

• Status: 🔴 Unverified

wanderland-paper-introduction-east-fence-0

• Status: 🔴 Unverified

wanderland-paper-introduction-west-fence-0

• Status: 🔴 Unverified