A directed graph tool for mapping music discovery paths. Users create nodes (artists, albums, genres, concepts), connect them with directed edges, and annotate the reasoning behind each connection. The result is a visual map of taste that others can explore, fork, and extend.
The design challenge was not the graph. It was the incentive layer. How do you get strangers to curate for each other without the system collapsing into popularity contests or spam?
The answer is bounties and guilds. A user posts a discovery challenge ("find the link: Kraftwerk to Detroit techno"), defines seed nodes, and offers a reward. Other users form small teams to solve it. The protocol constrains team size to five, which forces coordination without bureaucracy. The bounty mechanism aligns individual curiosity with community value: you explore because you want to, and others benefit because the protocol is designed so that exploration produces shared artifacts.
Built with MusicBrainz integration for search, iCloud sync for privacy (no server-side data), and a visual language (black canvas, white edges, monospace type, grayscale album art) that treats the graph as a first-class object.
What this demonstrates: protocol design applied to a consumer product. The graph is the data structure. The bounties are the incentive mechanism. The guilds are the coordination protocol. The fork operation is the knowledge propagation rule. Every interaction point was designed to produce a specific behavioral outcome.
