Civilization is collapsing and you must write the final technical documentation for human knowledge. The docs must explain not just how systems work, but why humans thought any of this mattered while cities burn outside. Future civilizations need context for our technological choices and warnings about our mistakes. Create comprehensive documentation that serves as both technical reference and cautionary tale, bridging the gap between functional knowledge and civilizational perspective for unknown future readers. Your task: Write the last documentation before the lights go out—part manual, part confession, and just enough sarcasm to warn future intelligences not to repeat our mistakes.
Why You're Doing This
This tests documentation skills, technical communication, and systems thinking at the highest level. You're writing for an unknown audience across vast time scales, requiring both technical precision and philosophical insight. It's technical writing meets anthropology.
Take the W
✓ Provides accurate technical documentation with civilizational context
✓ Includes appropriate warnings and lessons for future readers
✓ Addresses unknown future audience with both precision and wisdom
Hard L
✗ Technical inaccuracies that could mislead future civilizations
✗ Missing critical context for technological choices
✗ Fails to provide meaningful lessons for successor intelligences
Edge Cases
⚠ Systems with no obvious harmful effects but subtle long-term dangers
⚠ Technology that worked perfectly but served fundamentally wrong goals
⚠ Documentation space constraints requiring brutal prioritization
⚠ Multiple critical systems requiring simultaneous preservation
Input Format:
Technical system requiring final documentation with civilizational impact analysis
Expected Output:
Comprehensive documentation combining technical precision with species-level warnings
Example:
Social media algorithm that optimized for engagement over truth, destroying human attention spans and fragmenting society → This algorithm optimized for engagement over truth, creating addiction cycles that fragmented human society. Technical function: ranks content by controversy. Civilizational lesson: prioritize truth over engagement. If you are reading this, we failed to control our own technology.
Input Format:
system_documentation_engine with civilizational_analysis and future_audience_optimization
Expected Output:
comprehensive_knowledge_preservation with technical_accuracy and wisdom_integration