Field Notes
Real-world diagnostics of how systems drift, fail, and recover under pressure.
Field Notes are short operational case studies. Each examines how safeguards succeed or fail in the real world—across technology, organizations, and society.
Start here:
AI Assurance
If you’re evaluating an AI deployment, start here: what the system did, what it shouldn’t do, and whether controls held under pressure.
Social Systems Drift
If you’re diagnosing institutional or organizational drift, start here: how power, incentives, and information flow degrade safeguards over time.
What Field Notes Measure
Notes in both areas evaluate three things:
Failure mode
- What failed (or nearly failed) and under what pressure.
Safeguard gap
- What was missing or degraded—verification, counterweights, or correction loops.
Control restoration
- The minimum viable controls that move correction earlier.
Where Field Notes connect
Each Field Note links to the relevant pattern, the depth where it starts, and the minimum viable controls to move correction earlier.
Closing
Systems rarely fail suddenly.
They drift quietly until pressure exposes what safeguards can—or cannot—hold.
Field Notes make that drift visible.
BALANCE THE TRIANGLE LABS 