04 · Templates
Real surfaces,ready to ship.
The frames the brand travels in: the post page, share cards, slides, and the newsletter. Every specimen renders from the site's own tokens and components, so when the system changes, they change with it.
01 · Post page
Where every essay lands
The template every piece of writing on irvingspace.com ships to. Below is the latest post's first screen, rendered by the post template itself.
← Writing log
The Systems of Provenance
AI now generates the analysis, the numbers, and the decisions your business runs on. Trace one back and most companies cannot say where it came from, whether it holds up, what it is worth, or what it has already changed. The problem is no longer what AI produces. It is whether you can trust it.
- Filed under
- Published
- 2026.07.06
- Read time
- 9 MIN
- AI autonomy
- L02 · Advise
- Drawn by
John Irving · Human
Study the price of bitcoin over the years and the climb can be explained a dozen ways. Some of it is hype. Some of it is supply and demand. Some of it is the technology itself. But under all of those explanations sits a quieter one that holds the rest up: Provenance.
prov·e·nance (noun)
1. The place of origin or earliest known history of something.
2. A record of ownership of a work of art or an antique, used as a guide to authenticity or quality. From the Latin provenire*, "to come forth." — Oxford Languages*
Every bitcoin carries its whole history, every transaction traceable back to the block it was mined in, on a ledger nobody can quietly edit. That history is its provenance, the unbroken record of where a thing came from and every hand it passed through, complete enough to prove it is real. With a bitcoin, provenance is not attached to the asset. It is the asset. Break the chain and there is nothing left to own.
NFTs were sold as the same promise, and for a while people paid millions on it. But the token rarely had authority over what it supposedly proved. Some pointed to an image on a server that could go dark. Others came wrapped in vague promises of access, royalties, or membership that no code actually enforced. The token proved you owned the token. It could not make the world honor what the token was said to represent. When the servers went dark and the promises went unkept, the tokens did not get cheaper. They became worthless.
Here is the part people missed. Provenance only holds value when the record has authority over the thing it records. Bitcoin's ledger does not point at the coin. It is the coin. A record that only points at something it cannot control is not provenance. It is a claim.
Open “The Systems of Provenance” on irvingspace.com →
Anatomy
- Header
- The accent band with the white grid. Headline in Archivo 800 at 56px; the excerpt sits under a 48px rule.
- Title block
- Paper card, 432 wide, one ruled row per fact: filed under, published, read time, AI autonomy (AI posts only), drawn by. The sheet number sits in the bar.
- Sheet
- Paper, 960 wide (8 columns). The 120 margins leave a 720 prose column (6 columns).
- Prose
- IBM Plex Sans 19/30 in ink-2. H2 in Archivo 700 at 32/40. Quotes in Archivo 500 at 24/36 behind an accent rule.
- Figures
- Code-drawn SVG or an image with an ink outline, captioned in mono.
Figure layouts
Default fills the prose column. Wide takes the sheet. A float hangs 3 columns into the margin; below 1240 it falls back to the column.
03 · Slides
When the writing goes to a room
Four slide types, all 16:9, all on the same grid. A deck built from these reads the way this site does.
Specs
- Size
- 1920 × 1080, 16 columns of 120 with the 24 grid inside.
- Title
- Archivo 800 at 112/120, two lines, the second in accent. A paper bar holds the logo.
- Divider
- An accent block with the white grid. Number the sections like sheets: 01, 02, 03.
- Content
- A figure on paper beside three points at most, and a mono source line at the foot.
Do
- One idea per slide. The heading is the claim.
- Draw the figure. A code-drawn diagram beats a screenshot.
Don't
- Put more than three points on a content slide.
- Close on a pitch. The last frame is the question, or a thank you.
04 · Email
When writing goes to inboxes
One essay per issue, in a 600px column that holds up in Gmail, Apple Mail, and Outlook without custom fonts.
This week
The Systems of Provenance
AI now generates the analysis, the numbers, and the decisions your business runs on. Trace one back and most companies cannot say where it came from, whether it holds up, what it is worth, or what it has already changed. The problem is no longer what AI produces. It is whether you can trust it.
Also this week
When Everyone Has the Same Content Operations, What's Your Actual Differentiator?
High-volume content operations were a real competitive moat, until AI made them available to everyone. The moat is gone. What remains is the differentiation that was always underneath it
Email-safe
- Width
- 600, one column, fluid on phones.
- Type
- Most clients don't load web fonts, so Archivo and Plex fall back to Helvetica and Arial. The specimen shows it that way. The wordmark's Georgia is everywhere.
- Ground
- Flat ground color, no grid: most clients drop background images.
- Button
- A 48-tall link built as a table cell, accent fill, white label. One per issue.
- Footer
- Why they're getting it, and a one-click unsubscribe.
Do
- Lead with the essay’s question. The subject line is a headline.
- Link to the post above the fold.
Don't
- Open with “I’m excited to share…” or any announcement framing.
- Stack calls to action. One essay, one button.