KATABATIC

the two roles :: the human jobs, read off the artifacts

Observed before named

Strip the model out of this corpus and two human functions remain, doing all the load-bearing work that is neither authoring content nor executing builds. The operator named them for students as jobs worth getting after: the AI distiller and the AI orchestrator. The names are new. The artifacts they leave behind are all over the kit.

distiller Compresses a live working history into governed, executable form. In this corpus the distillates are the build guide, the sealed envelope, the skin registry, and the state file. Every guide version is scar tissue from a specific executor failure mode, and the guide is what makes executor tier matter less: distillation is why a mid-tier seat can run a pipeline a top-tier seat helped design.
orchestrator Routes the work. Chooses which model tier holds which seat, holds the commit tokens, owns the review queue to the human authority, and merges the state so parallel seats do not fork the truth. The orchestrator's product is not an artifact; it is a property: any seat can be cold-booted, proven by fixture, and trusted with exactly one commit at a time.

Why jobs, not features

The tooling automates neither. Distillation decides what a failure meant, which is a judgment about causes. Orchestration decides what a session is for, which is a judgment about value. Both judgments survive model upgrades, and both compound: every scar distilled makes the next seat cheaper, and every routing decision measured makes the next one faster.

In this corpus the distiller and the orchestrator are one person. Nothing in the method requires that, and nothing at scale suggests it survives. Named for students 2026-07-13; defined here strictly from the artifacts in the kit.