Everything Is a VisionBlock: Conversational Authoring over Git-Versioned Content for Spatial Computing
TL;DR
The VisionBlock system is presented, which splits an application into an engine -- a generic binary with a fixed set of capabilities -- and themes: complete applications expressed as trees of VisionBlocks, units of declarative content the engine renders.
Abstract
Spatial applications compile their content into shipped binaries, so every change costs a build-and-redeploy cycle. We present the VisionBlock system, which splits an application into an engine -- a generic binary with a fixed set of capabilities (render panels, volumes, and immersive scenes; fetch data; run gestures) -- and themes: complete applications expressed as trees of VisionBlocks, units of declarative content the engine renders. Themes are data: creating, changing, or publishing one never touches the binary. Authoring is a chat -- each turn produces a VisionBlock's next version -- and versioning is plain git. The model is five-dimensional: dimensions 1-3 are space (panel, volume, room); dimension 4 is time (git history -- revert to roll back, branch to try variants); dimension 5 is the principal (the per-user domain: the same path resolves differently per person). The engine renders one point, (x, y, z, version, principal). One consequence follows per non-spatial axis: iteration collapses to chat turns and reverts; ownership and permission are properties of content; and together they make applications items -- grantable, forkable, sellable subtrees, an economy of apps inside one binary. A blockchain explorer, a document reader, an immersive showroom all run on the same engine; none requires a deploy to change. This paper presents the design; a production implementation is underway, and a subsequent version will report implementation and evaluation.
