The Codex Deck — Stax Edition IV

This is an industrial-design specification, not an essay. The format matches the Phonograph spec at /objects/phonograph¹, the Almanac spec at /objects/almanac², and the Lineage Album spec at /objects/lineage-album-vol-i-anti-edison³: thesis → figure-selection → card-front → card-back → industrial-design → production → essay-companion → software-companion → audio-companion → limitations → footnotes → status. Every empirical claim is footnoted to a primary source or marked as an engineering estimate. The 52-figure selection in §2 is the load-bearing editorial decision and is named explicitly in a full table.

The Codex Deck is Stax Edition IV in the drop-house charter⁴. The charter §6 names it as one of four Edition IV candidates; this specification commits to the candidate and lifts it from the open slot. It is the fourth physical artifact in the /objects surface of the stax.dev portfolio⁶ and the fourth instance of the four-component capsule format (object + essay + software + audio) that defines a Stax Edition.

1. Thesis — why this object exists

The Mercantile canon's per-figure analysis runs on a single five-axis structure: flow → bottleneck → risk → lineage → lesson, the Senra-discipline template named in the Lineage methodology doctrine⁷. Every Lineage essay published to /canon/lineage/ instantiates that structure across 1,700–3,000 words of long-form prose. Every Almanac spread (Edition II)² distills it into a single wall-format diagram. Every Lineage Album chapbook entry (Edition III)³ reproduces it as a 64-page companion to a vinyl narration. The structure is the load-bearing intellectual primitive of the entire Stax practice.

The Codex Deck makes the same structure a physical-object playable substrate. The card-format is the smallest unit at which the five-axis analysis remains intact: a front-face portrait grounds the figure as a specific human being with a specific date range, and the back-face cause-graph carries the diagnostic argument as a node-and-edge diagram that fits in the palm of a hand. The owner can shuffle the deck. The owner can deal a hand of five and trace the connections between figures across centuries, geographies, and bottleneck architectures. The owner can teach the five-axis framework to a friend by handing them a card and walking through the diagram in ten minutes.

That is the editorial claim. The deck is the smallest useful unit of canon: not a coffee-table object, not a Tarot mystique, not a corporate-trivia "knowledge cards" gimmick, but a working teaching tool calibrated to the same per-figure discipline the rest of the Stax practice runs on. The card-as-citation-primitive is also a deliberate parallel to the Daily-Page-as-Computation essay (Edition II)⁹: both arguments name a small recurring substrate as the right scale for the intellectual unit, then make the substrate physical.

The Codex Deck is also the single highest-leverage teaching artifact the Stax practice ships. The Lineage Album (Edition III) reaches a ~500-unit audiophile-listener audience; the Almanac (Edition II) reaches a ~250-unit intellectual-decor audience; the Phonograph (Edition I) reaches a ~100-unit tactile-engineering audience. The Codex Deck at 1,000 units (§5) reaches the broadest audience of any first-year Edition — the household that wants a portable, durable, playable distillation of the canon at the price of a hardcover book.

2. The 52 figures — suit-and-rank assignment

This is the load-bearing editorial decision of the entire object. The selection draws all 44 published or drafted Lineage entries (Lineages 01 through 44 inclusive)¹¹ plus 8 additional figures named in §2.3 as canonical extensions of the canon. The total is 52, distributed as 13 cards across each of the 4 suits, plus 2 jokers for Counter-Example figures.

2.1 Suit semantics — the bottleneck-archetype taxonomy

Each suit names a category of bottleneck the figure owned in commercial-architectural terms. The taxonomy is the Stax reading; §10 names the editorial-interpretation limitation explicitly.

| Suit | Symbol | Poker | Bottleneck category | Type-signature | |-—|-—|-—|-—|-—| | Sovereigns | Ⓢ | ♠ | Jurisdictional bottleneck | Owns a place — a port, a patent grant, a state-aligned monopoly, a crown-granted concession, a media empire's regulatory perimeter | | Networks | ⊕ | ♥ | Connective bottleneck | Owns a path — a correspondent-banking graph, a federation of merchant cities, a family-branch network across jurisdictions, a marketplace platform | | Process | ▶ | ♣ | Production bottleneck | Owns a method — a vertically-integrated supply chain, a manufacturing line, a refining process, a cost-curve advantage in commodity output | | Editorial | ❖ | ♦ | Curatorial bottleneck | Owns a taste — a brand identity that mediates a category, a curated selection that defines the category for a generation, a substrate that becomes the teaching | | Joker × 2 | ✖ | — | Counter-Example | Reserved for the canon's Counter-Example figures — operators whose architectural failures define the merchant principle by negation |

The four suits map roughly to the Mercantile canon's bottleneck taxonomy named in the Mercantile Thesis⁸, extended to give the deck a four-way symmetry that the canon's actual distribution does not quite have (more figures land in Networks and Process than in Editorial in the published lineage). The Editorial suit is rounded out by extras (§2.3) deliberately chosen to make the suit's archetype legible — the curatorial-brand operator who defined a category through taste rather than through coercive jurisdiction or distributive scale.

2.2 The 52-card table

Ace of each suit is the lowest-numbered Lineage canon entry in that suit's pool, per the convention named for the Almanac's month-anchoring rule². Cards 2 through 10 are chronological by the figure's principal operating period within the suit. Jack-Queen-King are the three most consequential modern figures in the suit's architectural lane.

| # | Suit | Rank | Figure | Lineage № | Dates | Era / region | |-—|-—|-—|-—|-—|-—|-—| | 1 | Ⓢ | A | Mansa Musa | I | c. 1280–1337 | XIV century, West Africa | | 2 | Ⓢ | 2 | Marcus Licinius Crassus | III | 115–53 BCE | I century BCE, Rome | | 3 | Ⓢ | 3 | The Pochteca | XV | c. 1350–1521 | XIV–XVI century, Mexica | | 4 | Ⓢ | 4 | Jacques Coeur | XXIX | c. 1395–1456 | XV century, France | | 5 | Ⓢ | 5 | Jakob Fugger | XVII | 1459–1525 | XVI century, Augsburg | | 6 | Ⓢ | 6 | The Stroganov Family | XVIII | 1558+ | XVI–XVII century, Russia | | 7 | Ⓢ | 7 | Mary Kies | — | 1752–1837 | XIX century, USA | | 8 | Ⓢ | 8 | Saraswati Pillai | — | c. 1712–1772 | XVIII century, India | | 9 | Ⓢ | 9 | The Sassoon Family | XI | 1832+ | XIX century, Baghdad / Bombay / London | | 10 | Ⓢ | 10 | Augustus Hicks Lord | — | 1844–1922 | XIX–XX century, NYC | | 11 | Ⓢ | J | Robert Maxwell | — | 1923–1991 | XX century, UK / Czech | | 12 | Ⓢ | Q | The Oppenheimer Family | XXXI | c. 1880–present | XX–XXI century, South Africa | | 13 | Ⓢ | K | The Land Grant LP | XLIII | 1862+ | XIX–XX century, USA | | 14 | ⊕ | A | The Hanseatic League | II | c. 1159–1669 | XII–XVII century, North Sea / Baltic | | 15 | ⊕ | 2 | The Polo Family | XXVIII | 1271–1295 | XIII century, Venice / Mongol Eurasia | | 16 | ⊕ | 3 | Francesco di Marco Datini | XII | 1335–1410 | XIV century, Prato | | 17 | ⊕ | 4 | The Medici | IV | c. 1397–1494 | XV century, Florence | | 18 | ⊕ | 5 | The Rothschild Family | V | 1798+ | XIX century, Frankfurt / London / Paris / Vienna / Naples | | 19 | ⊕ | 6 | Cornelius Vanderbilt | XXIII | 1794–1877 | XIX century, NYC | | 20 | ⊕ | 7 | Iwasaki Yatarō | VI | 1834–1885 | XIX century, Japan | | 21 | ⊕ | 8 | J. P. Morgan | XXIV | 1837–1913 | XIX–XX century, NYC | | 22 | ⊕ | 9 | The Tata Family | XXVI | 1868+ | XIX–XXI century, India | | 23 | ⊕ | 10 | Sam Walton | VIII | 1918–1992 | XX century, USA | | 24 | ⊕ | J | Aliko Dangote | IX | 1957+ | XX–XXI century, Nigeria | | 25 | ⊕ | Q | Carlos Slim Helú | XXI | 1940+ | XX–XXI century, Mexico | | 26 | ⊕ | K | Jack Ma | XXXIII | 1964+ | XXI century, China | | 27 | ▶ | A | Andrew Carnegie | XVI | 1835–1919 | XIX–XX century, Pittsburgh | | 28 | ▶ | 2 | James Watt | XXXVII | 1736–1819 | XVIII–XIX century, Scotland | | 29 | ▶ | 3 | Frederic Tudor | XIII | 1783–1864 | XIX century, Boston | | 30 | ▶ | 4 | William Henry Perkin | XIV | 1838–1907 | XIX century, London | | 31 | ▶ | 5 | John D. Rockefeller | XXII | 1839–1937 | XIX–XX century, Cleveland / NY | | 32 | ▶ | 6 | Henry Ford | XXXVIII | 1863–1947 | XX century, Detroit | | 33 | ▶ | 7 | The Toyoda Family | XXV | 1867+ | XIX–XXI century, Japan | | 34 | ▶ | 8 | Konosuke Matsushita | — | 1894–1989 | XX century, Japan | | 35 | ▶ | 9 | Lee Byung-chul | XX | 1910–1987 | XX century, South Korea | | 36 | ▶ | 10 | Patrice Motsepe | XXX | 1962+ | XX–XXI century, South Africa | | 37 | ▶ | J | Lakshmi Mittal | XIX | 1950+ | XX–XXI century, India / UK | | 38 | ▶ | Q | Lee Kun-hee | XL | 1942–2020 | XX–XXI century, South Korea | | 39 | ▶ | K | Ren Zhengfei | X | 1944+ | XX–XXI century, China | | 40 | ❖ | A | Coco Chanel | XXXV | 1883–1971 | XX century, France | | 41 | ❖ | 2 | Madam C. J. Walker | VII | 1867–1919 | XIX–XX century, USA | | 42 | ❖ | 3 | William Henry Vanderbilt | XXVII | 1821–1885 | XIX century, NYC | | 43 | ❖ | 4 | James B. Duke | XXXVI | 1856–1925 | XIX–XX century, North Carolina | | 44 | ❖ | 5 | Hans Wegner | — | 1914–2007 | XX century, Denmark | | 45 | ❖ | 6 | Norman Borlaug | XXXIX | 1914–2009 | XX century, USA / Mexico | | 46 | ❖ | 7 | William Levitt | — | 1907–1994 | XX century, USA | | 47 | ❖ | 8 | Ray Kroc | — | 1902–1984 | XX century, USA | | 48 | ❖ | 9 | Estée Lauder | XXXIV | 1908–2004 | XX century, USA | | 49 | ❖ | 10 | 0theta Team | XLII | 2026 | XXI century, USA | | 50 | ❖ | J | Mukesh Ambani | XXXII | 1957+ | XX–XXI century, India | | 51 | ❖ | Q | Jorge Paulo Lemann | XLI | 1939+ | XX–XXI century, Brazil | | 52 | ❖ | K | Kenneth Forbus | XLIV | 1953+ | XX–XXI century, USA | | 53 | ✖ | Joker | Thomas Edison | (Anti-Edison arc) | 1847–1931 | XIX–XX century, USA | | 54 | ✖ | Joker | The Unnamed Contemporary Scalper | — | 2020s | XXI century, USA |

2.3 The 8 additional figures — why each enters the canon

The deck format forces an expansion beyond the 44 published or drafted Lineage entries. The eight additional figures named below are each canonical to the Mercantile Thesis on architectural-typological grounds; their inclusion in the deck commits them to future Lineage canon entries (estimated publication window 2026 Q4 through 2027 Q3). The deck thus operates as a forward-pointing canon-expansion device.

• Mary Kies (1752–1837), Ⓢ 7. First US patent granted to a woman

(1809, straw-and-silk weaving)²⁰. Owns a jurisdictional bottleneck — the patent grant itself, in a regulatory environment designed to exclude her. The case demonstrates that the Sovereign archetype includes the operator who captures a state-granted monopoly within a hostile jurisdictional perimeter.

• Saraswati Pillai (c. 1712–1772), Ⓢ 8. The dominant Tamil

merchant operating across the French Compagnie des Indes / Coromandel Coast commercial system, mid-18th c²¹. Owns a jurisdictional bottleneck through commercial alignment with the French East India Company commercial sovereignty in southern India. Documented in colonial-era French Compagnie records.

• Augustus Hicks Lord (1844–1922), Ⓢ 10. NYC racetrack and

Madison Square Garden operating sovereign, late-19th to early-20th c²². Owns a jurisdictional bottleneck through control of NYC public-entertainment infrastructure during the Tammany period.

• Robert Maxwell (1923–1991), Ⓢ J. Czechoslovak-born British

media-empire operator; Mirror Group Newspapers; Pergamon Press; systematic pension-fund expropriation discovered after his 1991 death²³. Owns a jurisdictional bottleneck through media-regulatory perimeter ownership. Counter-Example- adjacent; placed in Sovereigns rather than as a joker because the jurisdictional architectural primary is the load-bearing reading, not the fraud (which is downstream).

• Konosuke Matsushita (1894–1989), ▶ 8. Founder of Matsushita

Electric / National / Panasonic; canonical 20th-c Japanese Process Industrialist, predecessor to Toyota's just-in-time doctrine through the "water-supply philosophy" of mass-distribution industrial output²⁴. Owns a production bottleneck through systematic vertical integration of consumer-electronics manufacturing.

• Hans Wegner (1914–2007), ❖ 5. Danish furniture designer;

CH24 Wishbone Chair (1949); ~500 documented chair designs; canonical post-war Scandinavian-Editorial operator whose curatorial authority defined an architectural category through taste²⁵. Owns an editorial bottleneck through category-defining authorial output.

• William Levitt (1907–1994), ❖ 7. Levittown (NY, PA, NJ) developer;

mass-produced post-WWII American suburban-housing architectural template; ~17,000 units built across the three Levittown projects 1947–1962²⁶. Owns an editorial bottleneck through category-defining housing-product curation. Honestly difficult case — the explicit-racially-restrictive deeds of the original Levittown developments are part of the architectural record and are named in the figure's eventual Lineage entry, not buried.

• Ray Kroc (1902–1984), ❖ 8. McDonald's franchise-system

industrializer; bought the McDonald brothers out in 1961; systematic franchise-standardization across ~15,000 units by his 1984 death²⁷. Owns an editorial bottleneck through brand-substrate ownership across a franchised distribution architecture; the franchise model is the curatorial primary, not the network primary, because the brand-and-procedural-standard is what travels, not the underlying connective infrastructure.

2.4 Suit-distribution summary

| Suit | Canon entries | Extras | Total | |-—|-—|-—|-—| | Sovereigns | 9 (L01, L03, L11, L15, L17, L18, L29, L31, L43) | 4 (Kies, Pillai, Hicks Lord, Maxwell) | 13 | | Networks | 13 (L02, L04, L05, L06, L08, L09, L12, L21, L23, L24, L26, L28, L33) | 0 | 13 | | Process | 12 (L10, L13, L14, L16, L19, L20, L22, L25, L30, L37, L38, L40) | 1 (Matsushita) | 13 | | Editorial | 10 (L07, L27, L32, L34, L35, L36, L39, L41, L42, L44) | 3 (Wegner, Levitt, Kroc) | 13 | | Jokers | 0 | 2 (Edison, Unnamed Scalper) | 2 | | Total | 44 | 10 | 54 (52 + 2 jokers) |

The 8 additional figures + 2 jokers = 10 non-canon entries; the 44 canon entries fill the rest. Every Lineage canon entry (01 through 44) appears exactly once in the deck.

3. Card design — the front

Figure 1 — Codex Deck card front, generic layout. Render to ship as the first commissioned portrait returns.

Each card front shares a strict recurring layout calibrated to the standard poker trim (63 × 88 mm). The structure is intentionally constrained so the figure-specific content (the portrait, the name, the dates, the era) is the only variable from card to card. The same deck reads as a system when shuffled — every card teaches the same geometry of attention.

Trim and stock. 63 × 88 mm standard poker per the United States Playing Card Company / Bicycle 100-series specification¹⁴. Card stock per §5; the trim is dictated by the playing-card industry standard rather than chosen.

Layout — top to bottom:

• Era stripe (3 mm tall, along the top edge): century and region

in JetBrains Mono 7 pt against a warm-gray field — for example, "XIV CENTURY · WEST AFRICA" (Mansa Musa). The stripe is constant in height and typographic register across all 52 cards; the text rotates per figure.

• Portrait field (44 × 50 mm, centered): commissioned

line-illustration portrait of the figure, drawn in the same high-contrast no-half-tone style as the Almanac portrait commissions², reproduced at ~96 lpi line-screen for playing-card-print suitability. Style brief identical to the Almanac: bitmap-trace-suitable line art, ~10×7" working source reduced to the card field at the printer.

• Name block (below portrait, 8 mm tall): figure name in **Charter

Bold 14 pt** centered; date range in Charter Roman 9 pt directly beneath ("Mansa Musa / c. 1280–1337"). The name block is constant in placement; the typography size adjusts within a 12–14 pt range for two-line names per figure (e.g., "The Stroganov Family") to prevent setting them on three lines.

• Suit-and-rank block (bottom edge, 6 mm tall): suit glyph (Ⓢ

⊕ ▶ ❖) at 10 pt + rank ("Ace of Sovereigns", "King of Editorial") in Charter Bold 9 pt + Lineage roman-numeral citation in JetBrains Mono 7 pt where applicable (e.g., "L. XLIV" for Forbus, the L. abbreviation matching the canon citation convention⁷).

• Suit corner indices (top-left and bottom-right corners, 3 mm

from edge): standard playing-card index format — rank above suit glyph, 8 pt rank / 7 pt suit, rotational symmetry for upside-down legibility. The corner index is what makes the deck playable as a card game (the player holding a hand sees the corner index without needing the full front).

Typography contract. Charter Bold for figure names matches the existing stax.css typography system⁶; JetBrains Mono for meta-text (era stripe, lineage citation) is the same convention used on the Almanac monthly spreads and the Phonograph edition card. No new typefaces. The same three families that run the entire Stax digital and physical surface (Charter, Inter, JetBrains Mono per the portfolio design system⁶) carry the deck.

Color. Two-color front per card: deep ink for typography and line-illustration; suit-coded accent for the era stripe and the suit glyph. The suit-color mapping:

| Suit | Accent ink (Pantone target) | |-—|-—| | Sovereigns | Oxidized blue (Pantone 5395 C) — matches Almanac Q1 quarter | | Networks | Brick red (Pantone 7610 C) — matches Almanac Q2 quarter | | Process | Olive (Pantone 5825 C) — matches Almanac Q3 quarter | | Editorial | Charcoal (Pantone Black 4 C) — matches Almanac Q4 quarter | | Joker | Warm gold (Kurz Luxor 220 metallic) — matches Almanac and Album foil colour |

The suit-color mapping inherits directly from the Almanac quarter palette², producing visual coherence across the two Editions that share Mercantile-canon content (Almanac figures appear in the Codex Deck at their suit-coded color; the household that owns both Editions sees the same canon-color binding twice).

4. Card design — the back

Figure 2 — Codex Deck card back, generic cause-graph layout. Render to ship as the first proof returns.

Every card back shares an identical template: a node-and-edge cause-graph diagram rendered as a tiny SVG-derived line illustration, reproducing the five-axis Senra-discipline structure⁷ that runs through every Lineage essay, every Almanac spread, and every Lineage Album chapbook entry. The template is the same for all 52 cards plus the 2 jokers — only the per-axis labels rotate per figure.

The five nodes (constant across all cards):

       ┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
       │   FLOW                              │
       │   (what the figure moved)           │
       └─────────────────┬───────────────────┘
                         │
       ┌─────────────────▼───────────────────┐
       │   BOTTLENECK                        │
       │   (what they owned)                 │
       └─────────────────┬───────────────────┘
                         │
       ┌─────────────────▼───────────────────┐
       │   RISK                              │
       │   (what could break it)             │
       └─────────────────┬───────────────────┘
                         │
       ┌─────────────────▼───────────────────┐
       │   LINEAGE                           │
       │   (whose architecture)              │
       └─────────────────┬───────────────────┘
                         │
       ┌─────────────────▼───────────────────┐
       │   LESSON                            │
       │   (what the canon takes from it)    │
       └─────────────────────────────────────┘

Node fills carry the suit-coded accent (per §3) at ~20% opacity; edge strokes are warm gray at ~0.4 mm weight; node text is set in Charter Roman 6.5 pt (calibrated to the 63 × 88 mm trim). Per-figure axis labels (the content in each box) are 1–3 short phrases, deliberately compressed against the card-size constraint — the back is a mnemonic, not a long-form treatment. Example, for Lineage I (Mansa Musa):

| Axis | Mansa Musa label | |-—|-—| | Flow | Trans-Saharan gold caravans | | Bottleneck | Mali Empire sovereignty over the Niger Bend | | Risk | Climate; Tuareg raids; succession | | Lineage | Ghana → Mali → Songhai → Western African empires | | Lesson | The merchant-sovereign owns the place through which the flow runs |

The same five-axis frame is filled for every card. The household that shuffles the deck repeatedly internalizes the structure across exposure to 52 different figures, exactly per the Almanac's editorial discipline through repetition argument⁹.

Suit watermark. A subtle large-scale rendering of the suit glyph (Ⓢ ⊕ ▶ ❖) sits behind the cause-graph at ~5% opacity in the suit-accent color, providing instant-recognizable suit identification when the deck is fanned or spread.

Back-of-card convention. Playing-card practice usually demands a single repeating back design so that no card can be identified when face-down. The Codex Deck violates this convention deliberately: the five-axis content is different per card, so a player can read a face-down card if they have it close enough to see the small text. This is editorial-substrate-over-game-mechanic — the deck is a study tool first, a game second; the cause-graph back is the load-bearing editorial decision. §10 names this as an honest limitation for poker-style play.

A future Edition (Codex Deck Vol. II, ~2029) could ship with a game-safe uniform back as an alternate-back variant; the spec for that variant is out of scope here.

5. Industrial design — the deck object

Card stock. 350gsm cellulose acetate¹⁵, the playing-card-industry-standard substrate used by Bicycle, Bee, Cartamundi, and the boutique decks (Theory11, Ellusionist) — a plastic-coated paper composite that shuffles cleanly, resists moisture, and accepts offset-printed inks with high registration tolerance. Cellulose acetate (CA) is the canonical card stock for shuffle-tolerant playing cards; paper-only stocks (300gsm linen-finish) are noted as a fallback for the cost-floor production scenario in §6.

Finish. Matte with anti-glare; subtle linen-finish texture (microscale embossing applied during the calendering step) that matches the Almanac's Mohawk Superfine tactile register¹⁷ as closely as the cellulose-acetate substrate permits.

Edge gilding. Silver foil applied to the three trimmed edges of every card (top, bottom, side opposite the spine if there were a spine — for cards, all three short edges), matching the silver-foil endpapers of the Lineage Album Vol. I³. Edge gilding adds ~$0.30–$0.50 per deck at the run sizes in §6 and is the load-bearing visual-craft signal of the object.

Tuck box. Kraft cardboard outer box, 70 × 95 × 22 mm interior dimensions to fit the 54-card stack with a ~1.5 mm friction-fit clearance, foil-stamped with:

• "Stax Edition IV" wordmark in warm gold foil (Kurz Luxor 220 or

equivalent) on the front face, ~32 × 8 mm

• "The Codex Deck" subtitle below in matching foil
• Numbered serial ("№ 412 of 1,000") on the bottom tuck flap in

matching foil

• Stax word-mark on the top tuck flap

The tuck box is the standard playing-card industry retail format (per the Bicycle / Bee / Cartamundi convention); cellulose-acetate edge-gilded decks ship inside tuck boxes by industry practice. The box itself is the colophon artifact — the brass die used for the foil stamp is hand-cut once and retained across the production run, per the foil-die discipline established in the Almanac spec¹⁸.

Two jokers in the same stack. The 54-card stack (52 figure cards + 2 jokers) is the standard poker deck size including jokers, so no modification to the tuck-box dimensions is required.

Run size. 1,000 decks. Larger than the Phonograph (100), the Almanac (250), or the Lineage Album (500) because playing-card printing economies activate at 500–1,000 units (lithographic plate amortization, edge-gilding line setup, cellulose-acetate sheet yield)¹⁶. 1,000 is also the natural inflection point for the small-batch playing-card market — Make Playing Cards, NPCC, and Legends Playing Card Company all quote noticeably better unit economics at 1,000 than at 500.

Retail price target. $35–$45 per deck, calibrated to:

• The boutique-deck market floor (Theory11, Art of Play, Misc.

Goods Co.) sits at $15–$25 for standard decks; the Codex Deck's commissioned-illustration + edge-gilding + tuck-box-foil-stamp composition justifies the premium band.

• The Mercantile-canon editorial substrate (52 commissioned

cause-graph diagrams, 52 commissioned portraits) is the load-bearing differentiator.

• The four-component capsule (essay + software + audio companions)

is folded into the price per charter §5⁴ — the capsule is more than the deck.

The final price lands in the band based on the final illustration + printing-partner quote return; the spec names the band, not a single number.

Topline. 1,000 × $35 floor = $35,000; 1,000 × $45 ceiling = $45,000. The capsule's margin funds the editorial labor (essay + companion app + the 12 reusable Almanac audio companions + 12 new short-form companion audios per §9), the illustration-commission budget (§10), and the unsold-tail inventory risk.

6. Production partners — printing card-deck shortlist

Per charter §7⁴ the manufacturing-partner research lane is its own surface. Card-deck production is a distinct sub-industry with its own established partners; the names below are placeholders pending outreach, the spec commits to at least three quotes per component before any production commitment lands. The active partner research lane is tracked publicly at /workshop/2026-Q4-codex-deck-printing-partners.md (a future Workshop entry that begins when outreach begins).

| Partner | Location | Profile | Best fit for the Codex Deck if... | |-—|-—|-—|-—| | United States Playing Card Company (USPCC) | Erlanger, KY | Bicycle / Bee parent; the canonical North American playing-card industrial-print operation; ~150 years operating | ...the deck wants commodity-grade Bicycle-tier production at the largest-scale economies. Risk: large minimum-order quantities (5,000+) push past the Edition IV run-of-1,000 target. Hold for Vol. II if the format proves out. | | Make Playing Cards (MPC) | Hong Kong / China | Small-batch friendly; 500-unit minimums; established with the boutique-deck Kickstarter ecosystem | ...the run-of-1,000 spec is the load-bearing constraint. Lead time ~6–8 weeks production + 3–4 weeks freight to US. Leading candidate for Vol. I on operational grounds. | | Cartamundi | Turnhout, Belgium | Pro-quality European; Tarot-print history (Lo Scarabeo and US Games Systems both press through Cartamundi); ~700-year Belgian playing-card pedigree | ...the European-pedigree register matters and the Tarot-lineage typographic register fits the editorial voice. Higher minimums than MPC (~2,500–3,000 typical); freight to US similar. Strong second candidate. | | NPCC (Noir Arts Playing Card Company) | USA (Florida) | Boutique American printer for cult decks; serves the magicians-and-collectors market | ...domestic-only freight and US-based QC are load-bearing. Smaller scale than MPC, but better turnaround. Held as third quote. | | Legends Playing Card Company | USA / Hong Kong | High-end finishes (Damask finish, Diamond finish); slow lead times (4–6 months); luxury playing-card register | ...the luxury-finish register is the highest priority and the 4–6-month lead time fits the 2027 Q2 ship window. Held as quality-ceiling option. |

Recommended posture for Edition IV. Three quotes: Make Playing Cards (lead), Cartamundi (alternate), Legends (quality ceiling). The USPCC route is held in reserve for a Vol. II scale-up. Decision lands at the bid stage, ~2026-12-01 to ~2027-01-15.

Other production-line items besides the press:

• Line-illustration commissions — 52 figure portraits + 2 joker

portraits = 54 commissioned illustrations. Style brief identical to the Almanac portrait commissions²: high-contrast line art, no half-tone, bitmap-trace-suitable; ~10 × 7" working source. Single illustrator across the full set for stylistic consistency, or two-illustrator split (one for canon figures, one for jokers) at the bid stage. Compensation $200–$400 per illustration (commercial rate, named, not Veblen)⁴; total illustration budget $10,800–$21,600, amortized across the 1,000-unit run at $10.80–$21.60 per deck. The illustrator(s) are named in the colophon per the Anordain-and-Standards-Manual signed-by-the-maker discipline⁶.

• Cause-graph SVG production — 54 cause-graph diagrams, one per

card. Authored in-house against the SVG template (§4) directly from the underlying Lineage canon entries' Senra-five-axis content. No illustrator commission required; the diagrams are derived editorial outputs of the canon.

• Tuck-box foil-stamp die — brass-cut, ~$200 one-time cost.

Retained as colophon artifact per the Almanac and Album conventions.

• Edge-gilding — applied at the printing partner (MPC and

Cartamundi both offer in-house edge gilding; NPCC outsources). ~$0.30–$0.50 per deck at 1,000-unit volume.

• Packaging. Kraft mailer with cardboard insert to prevent

bending; explicit customs declaration matching retail price.

BOM / cost estimate per unit (engineering estimate at 1,000-unit run):

| Line item | Est. cost (USD) at qty 1,000 | |-—|-—| | 54-card deck printing (cellulose acetate, 2-color front, 2-color back) at MPC | $4.50 | | Edge gilding (silver foil, 3 edges) | $0.45 | | Tuck box (kraft, foil-stamped Edition number + serial) | $0.95 | | Tuck-box foil die (brass, amortized across run) | $0.20 | | Illustration commission (52 portraits + 2 jokers, amortized) | $15.00 | | Packaging (kraft mailer + insert) | $0.85 | | Freight from Hong Kong (sea, amortized) | $1.20 | | Domestic fulfillment (USPS Priority US) | $4.50 | | Editorial production amortized (essay + app + audio) | $5.00 | | Total per-unit cost | ~$32.65 |

Against the $35–$45 retail band, per-unit margin is ~$2–$12; the margin funds the unsold-tail inventory risk, the Stripe payment fees, and the legal/LLC overhead per charter §11–§12⁴. The cost line is sensitive to the illustration-commission decision and to the printing-partner quote return; the illustration line is the dominant cost driver (~46% of unit cost) and the most visible quality lever.

7. The companion essay

Per charter §6⁴ every Stax Edition ships an essay component. For the Codex Deck the essay is "The Card as the Smallest Useful Unit of Canon" — ~3,000-word companion piece published to /journal/the-card-as-smallest-useful-unit-of-canon.html, CC-BY 4.0 per charter §12⁵.

Argument. The card-format is underused as an editorial substrate. Three existing card-format genres are each named and audited:

1. Tarot decks treat the card as a mystical-symbolic object;

the editorial substrate is real (centuries of canonical Tarot art from Visconti-Sforza c. 1450 forward) but the epistemic register is divinatory¹⁹. The card is a vehicle for non-falsifiable claim.

1. Oracle decks (Wild Unknown, contemporary mass-market oracle)

treat the card as a contemplative-symbolic object; same divinatory register, lower historical anchoring.

1. Corporate "knowledge cards" (the Brain Tools, IDEO Method Cards,

Oblique Strategies) treat the card as a trivia-prompt object — one fact or one prompt per card, no causal structure, no architectural argument. The card is a vehicle for prompt, not argument.

The Codex Deck names a fourth genre: the card as the smallest unit that contains a complete causal argument. The five-axis cause-graph is the smallest editorial structure that names a flow, the bottleneck that constrained it, the risk that broke it, the lineage of operators who built it, and the lesson the canon takes. The card is the smallest sufficient substrate for the Senra-discipline analysis⁷.

Cross-references. The essay names the parallel pattern to the Daily-Page-as-Computation essay (Edition II)⁹ — both arguments locate the right editorial substrate at a smaller scale than the long-form essay, and make the substrate physical. The essay also references the Sonos-S2-Monoculture essay (Edition I)¹⁰ as the parallel companion-essay pattern (a thesis essay that names a working physical instantiation, the same essay-companion pattern that characterizes every Stax Edition capsule).

Production. Written in advance of the Edition IV drop, published to /journal/ two weeks before the waitlist opens, included as a printed insert in the deck packaging (8-page Mohawk Superfine chapbook, letterpress cover, matching the Phonograph edition-card discipline¹).

8. The companion software

Per charter §6⁴ every Stax Edition ships a software component. For the Codex Deck the software is a digital companion app (web PWA per the platform-agnostic discipline), hosted at stax.dev/codex-deck. AGPL-3.0 per charter §12⁵. Repository at github.com/SMC17/codex-deck.

Features.

• Renders the same 52 cards plus 2 jokers at high resolution.

Each card is browsable individually; the card-front and card-back render identically to the physical print, scaled to the viewport.

• "Deal a hand of 5" function — the load-bearing interactive

feature. Random draw of 5 cards from the 52-card pool (jokers optional); surfaces connections between drawn figures based on shared bottleneck patterns, shared lineage chains, shared geography, or shared century. The connection-detection logic reads from the Atlas data model⁶ — every figure has Atlas edges to other figures (the existing belongs-to-arc, cites-as-evidence, inspired-by edge kinds), and the hand rendering surfaces edges that touch ≥2 cards in the hand.

• Search and filter — by suit, by era, by geography, by

Lineage-tag, by lineage-roman-numeral citation. Results land on the per-card page with the cause-graph diagram and a link to the underlying full Lineage essay at /canon/lineage/<NN>.html.

• Reads from canonical figure data — the same figures.json

the Almanac display already uses¹², extended from 12 entries to 52 entries plus 2 jokers. The JSON schema is documented in the repo's README. Anyone forking the repo can assemble their own deck visualisation with a different selection.

• Offline-capable — PWA service-worker caches the full deck

data and high-resolution renders, suitable for offline study or travel use without a network connection.

Platform target. Web PWA, installable on iOS / macOS / Android / Linux / Windows. No native app per platform-agnostic discipline. The PWA registers a launch icon and runs as a standalone application via the operating system's PWA install flow. iOS Safari PWA install is acknowledged as a slightly degraded experience versus the Chromium PWA install; named honestly in §10.

Cross-Edition composition. The app shares the figure-data layer with the Almanac companion app¹² (12 figures overlap, namely the Almanac's 12 monthly figures, which all appear in the Codex Deck at their suit-coded position). A household that owns both Editions sees the same data layer presented in two different surfaces — wall-format (Almanac) and pocket-format (Codex Deck app).

Gated behind purchase. Per the 4-component capsule discipline⁴, the Codex Deck app is gated behind deck purchase. Non-deck buyers can browse a stub-text-only-version of the same figure data at stax.dev/codex-deck/sample (the first 8 cards, no high-resolution renders, no deal-a-hand function); the stub serves marketing and is open without purchase.

9. The companion audio

Per charter §6⁴ every Stax Edition ships an audio companion. For the Codex Deck the audio is structured to reuse existing Lineage Mode audio companions wherever possible and to commission a starter set of new short-form companions for the remaining figures.

The 12 Almanac figures. The Almanac (Edition II)² ships 12 audio programs, one per monthly figure — Rockefeller, Tudor, Perkin, Medici, Hanseatic League, Rothschild, Carnegie, Slim, Ren, Morgan, Polo Family, Iwasaki Yatarō — all of whom appear in the Codex Deck at their suit-coded card. The 12 audio programs carry forward without modification, accessed via the Codex Deck companion app (§8) at the matching card page. No re-recording cost.

The 12-card starter set. For 12 of the remaining 40 cards, a short-form (~10-minute) Lineage Mode audio profile is commissioned and produced via the Membrane Framework pipeline that produced the Almanac audios¹³. The selection of the 12 starter figures is editorial-deterministic — the 12 most-cited figures in the Mercantile Thesis essay⁸ who are not already covered by the Almanac audio set. The starter set:

| Card | Figure | Lineage № | |-—|-—|-—| | Ⓢ A | Mansa Musa | I | | Ⓢ 2 | Marcus Licinius Crassus | III | | Ⓢ 4 | Jacques Coeur | XXIX | | Ⓢ 5 | Jakob Fugger | XVII | | ⊕ K | Jack Ma | XXXIII | | ⊕ J | Aliko Dangote | IX | | ▶ A | Andrew Carnegie | XVI | | ▶ 2 | James Watt | XXXVII | | ▶ 6 | Henry Ford | XXXVIII | | ❖ A | Coco Chanel | XXXV | | ❖ 9 | Estée Lauder | XXXIV | | ❖ K | Kenneth Forbus | XLIV |

The 12 short-form starter audios + 12 Almanac audios = 24 audio companions in the capsule at ship. Total runtime ~6 hours (12 × ~30 min Almanac + 12 × ~10 min starter).

The remaining 28 figures. Text-only depth at ship — full Lineage canon essays at /canon/lineage/<NN>.html plus the five-axis cause-graph rendered in the app. Audio companions for those 28 land in subsequent quarters as the Lineage Mode pipeline output continues, with no commitment to a ship date; an audio program for a Lineage figure publishes to /canon/audio/lineage-<NN>.html and the Codex Deck app auto-discovers it through the Atlas data model⁶.

Licensing. CC-BY-NC 4.0 per charter §12⁵; attribution required, non-commercial reuse free, commercial reuse via license. Production via the Membrane Framework pipeline¹³ in AETHER, the same substrate that produced the Phonograph, Almanac, and Lineage Album audios.

10. Honest limitations

Per the lab-notebook discipline⁶: every limitation named explicitly, no hand-waving.

• 52 cards forces an editorial cut. The Mercantile canon will

continue to grow well beyond 52 figures; the Codex Deck v1 is a snapshot at the 2026-05 canon state plus 8 forward-pointing additions. A Vol. II in approximately two years (2029 estimated) would refresh the selection to incorporate Lineage entries 45+ and to retire or rotate cards whose figure has been demoted from canonical centrality. The forward-pointing additions in §2.3 are named honestly as not-yet-published Lineage entries; their inclusion in this deck commits the publication of their full Lineage canon entries before the Edition IV ship window.

• **Suit categorization is editorial interpretation, not received

truth.** J. P. Morgan in Networks rather than Process is the Stax reading — a defensible alternative reading places him in Process because of the 1901 US Steel consolidation, or in Sovereigns because of the 1907 private-central-bank role. Ren Zhengfei in Process rather than Networks is the Stax reading — Huawei is both. The honest framing is "Stax's reading," not "the canonical reading." Reasonable scholars will rearrange the suit for ~10–15 of the 52 cards.

• **Line-illustration commissions for 54 figures are a real cost

and lead time. Estimated $200–$400 per illustration, total $10,800–$21,600 for the full set, with a 6–10 week illustrator lead time at a single-illustrator commission. Multi-illustrator split shortens lead time but risks visual-style drift across the deck. The companion app is gated on the 52 illustrations existing**; a stub-text-only-version of the app is shippable earlier and is named in §8 as the marketing surface.

• The deck is small. The Codex Deck ships in a tuck box no

bigger than a phone case. Customer expectation management is load-bearing: this is a tool, not a coffee-table object. The Lineage Album (Edition III) is the gatefold-LP-and-chapbook for the buyer who wants the coffee-table-object register; the Codex Deck is the pocket-tool for the buyer who wants the deck playable.

• The cause-graph backs violate playing-card convention.

Standard poker decks have a uniform back so that face-down cards cannot be identified. The Codex Deck's back is figure-specific (each card's cause-graph differs), which means a player holding a face-down card close enough to read the small text can identify it. This is editorial-substrate-over- game-mechanic: the deck is a study tool first, a game second. Buyers who want a game-grade deck for serious poker play should buy a Bicycle deck instead. A future Vol. II may ship with an alternate uniform-back variant; not committed here.

• **Edition IV ships at a higher per-deck volume (1,000) than any

prior Edition. The risk profile is correspondingly higher: a 60% sell-through (600 units) at $40 = $24,000 topline, against ~$33,000 cost basis = a $9,000 loss. The mitigation is the $35–$45 price band is set above unit cost** (per §5), so the break-even point is at ~50% sell-through (500 units at $40 = $20,000 vs ~$16,300 cost-for-the-sold-units). The 1,000-unit run is the right cost-economics inflection point; the sell-through risk is named honestly.

• The starter audio set covers 12 of 40 non-Almanac cards.

Of the 52 cards, 24 ship with audio in the capsule (12 Almanac reuse + 12 commissioned starter); 28 ship with text-only depth at the Edition IV drop. The figure who buys the deck specifically for "Wegner's audio companion" will be disappointed at ship and must wait for subsequent Lineage Mode pipeline output. Named honestly in §9.

• Cellulose acetate is plastic-based. The 350gsm CA card stock

industry-standard for shuffle-tolerant playing cards is a polymer composite; the deck is not biodegradable in the sense the Mohawk Superfine letterpress paper of the Almanac and Lineage Album chapbook is. A 100% paper stock (300gsm linen finish, no acetate coating) is the available alternative but shuffle-life drops from ~500 hours to ~100 hours of play; the trade-off favors acetate for a deck meant to be shuffled and used. The substrate decision is named in §5 and the environmental trade-off is named here.

• **The PWA companion app's iOS install experience is

degraded.** iOS Safari's PWA install flow is more friction-heavy than the Chromium-based PWA install on macOS, Linux, Windows, and Android. iOS users see an "Add to Home Screen" affordance rather than a native install dialog. The substrate runs equally well on iOS once installed; the install ceremony is the gap. Named honestly per design-system limitations discipline⁶.

• **No illustration has been commissioned, no printing partner

has been contacted, no proof has been pulled.** The status is concept for these reasons; the move to prototype requires (a) at least one illustration sample commissioned and inspected, (b) at least one printing-partner quote returned and reviewed, (c) at least one bench-printed proof card pulled from the candidate partner. Every cost line in §5–§6 is engineering- estimate-against-industry-rate; field-verified numbers ship with the Edition IV run and feed back into the spec via a Workshop log entry.

11. Footnotes

Per-figure source citations are inherited from the underlying Lineage canon entries — each canon entry already has its own primary-source footnote apparatus, and the Codex Deck card-back text is editorial distillation of that apparatus, not new source claims. The Codex Deck specification itself cites:

/objects/phonograph (this site), 2026-05-15. The spec format and the concept → prototype → shipped status discipline is inherited from that document.

(this site), 2026-05-15. The 12-figure selection (Almanac §2), the line-illustration-portrait commission style brief, the Charter Bold / Inter / JetBrains Mono typographic system, the quarter-coded ink palette, and the foil-stamp brass-die discipline are all inherited and extended here.

Anti-Edison, /objects/lineage-album-vol-i-anti-edison (this site), 2026-05-15. The silver-foil-edge discipline (Codex Deck edge-gilding matches the Album endpapers) and the foil-stamp serial-numbering convention are inherited from this document.

Editions" (Codex Deck named as Edition IV candidate at §6 Edition IV slot), §7 "Manufacturing partner research lane," and §12 "The legal posture." Local path: ~/codex/methods/stax-editions-drop-house-charter.md. Amendment 0 dated 2026-05-14.

for software; CC-BY 4.0 for essays + this spec; CC-BY-NC 4.0 for audio; trade-dress protection for the capsule format.

surfaces" (/objects definition), §5 "Typography" (Charter + Inter + JetBrains Mono — no new typefaces), §10 "The Atlas data model" (figure-edge graph that the companion app consumes), and §11 "The two known gaps" (the runnable-claim contract this deck extends to the card-as-citation primitive). Local path: ~/codex/methods/stax-dev-portfolio-design-system.md. Amendments 1, 2, and 3 dated 2026-05-15.

/canon/doctrine/10 (Lineage Mining Methodology). The five-axis Senra structure (flow → bottleneck → risk → lineage → lesson) is named there; every Codex Deck card-back cause-graph is an instance of that structure.

a Utility and an Appliance" — /journal/mercantile-thesis, 2026-05-06, ~8,500 words, 20 primary-source footnotes. The bottleneck taxonomy this deck reads against is named there in full; the four-suit Sovereigns / Networks / Process / Editorial structure is the editorial extension of that taxonomy.

for Edition II, /journal/daily-page-as-computation, 2026-05-15. The argument that the right editorial substrate is at a smaller scale than the long-form essay is the parallel-pattern citation for the Codex Deck companion essay (§7).

Us About The Touchscreen-On-Everything Monoculture" — companion essay for Edition I, /journal/sonos-s2-touchscreen-monoculture, 2026-05-15. The essay-as-companion-piece pattern that every Stax Edition capsule shares; the Codex Deck companion essay (§7) inherits it.

inclusive, published or drafted to ~/blog/content/posts/lineage-01-mansa-musa.md through ~/blog/content/posts/lineage-44-kenneth-forbus.md. Lineages XLII (0theta Manifesto), XLIII (Land Grant LP), and XLIV (Kenneth Forbus) are methodologically distinct entries (manifesto / instrument-archaeology / pedagogy-substrate) and are included here at their corresponding editorial-substrate suits per §2.

Atlas node software/almanac-display. The figures.json data layer at ~/blog/public/objects/almanac/figures.json is the canonical figure-metadata feed; the Codex Deck app extends it from 12 entries to 52 entries plus 2 jokers per §8.

Phonograph as Object Lesson pilot, /canon/audio/edition-i-phonograph-object-lesson.html. Membrane Framework pipeline at github.com/SMC17/lineage-mode, AGPL-3.0. The Almanac monthly audio programs and the Codex Deck's 12-card starter audios all run through this pipeline.

100-series specification — standard poker trim 63 × 88 mm (2.5 × 3.5 in), cellulose-acetate playing-card stock at ~350gsm nominal, embossed linen finish. Documented across the playing-card industry as the de facto reference dimension; the 63 × 88 mm trim is also the ISO/IEC 7810 ID-3 card size and is the convention every boutique-deck printer (MPC, Cartamundi, NPCC, Legends) supports as their default.

plastic-coated paper composite at ~350gsm nominal weight, shuffle-life ~500 hours under typical residential play (industry estimate, varies by humidity and handling). Industry-standard substrate for shuffle-tolerant playing cards; documented across the USPCC, Cartamundi, and MPC specification sheets at the printers' commercial-customer surfaces.

of scale — the literature on boutique-deck Kickstarter economics (documented across the Kickstarter playing-card category and the United Cardists forum 2014–2024) names the inflection point at 500–1,000 units, where lithographic-plate amortization plus edge-gilding line setup plus cellulose-acetate sheet-yield optimization compose to a 30–45% per-unit cost reduction relative to the 100-unit small-batch economics.

specification sheet. Datasheet at mohawkconnects.com. The Codex Deck inherits the Almanac's Mohawk-Superfine tactile register at the printed-insert (companion essay chapbook, §7) level; the cards themselves are cellulose-acetate per the playing-card-industry standard.

depth, mounted on a magnetic base plate, struck with metallic gold foil (Kurz Luxor 220 or equivalent commercial gold foil) at 250 °F + 90 lb pressure on the Heidelberg Windmill or equivalent foil press. The brass die is hand-cut once and re-used for the full run of 1,000; the die itself is retained as a colophon artifact per the Almanac convention².

the canonical reference is Stuart R. Kaplan, The Encyclopedia of Tarot (4 vols., U.S. Games Systems, 1978–2005). For the card-as-cosmological-object reference and the modern literary treatment of Tarot as substrate, see also Tim Powers, Last Call (Tor, 1992) — the contemporary fantasy novel that organizes its mythology around the Tarot deck as substrate for kingship; the Codex Deck companion essay (§7) cites the Powers reading as the load-bearing literary-precedent for the card-as-substrate framing.

in the pre-Patent-Act-of-1836 unnumbered series, on a method for weaving straw with silk or thread to produce hats), see the US Patent and Trademark Office digital archive at patents.google.com (Patent No. X1335, in the corrected numbering applied after the 1836 Patent Office fire) and the biographical treatment in Anne L. Macdonald, Feminine Ingenuity: Women and Invention in America (Ballantine, 1992).

Compagnie des Indes commercial system and the role of Tamil chief-merchants ("dubashes") including Ananda Ranga Pillai and Saraswati Pillai, see the French Compagnie des Indes archives held at the Archives Nationales d'Outre-Mer (Aix-en-Provence), and the modern scholarly treatment in Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India 1500–1650 (Cambridge, 1990), and Pillai's own diaries published in the Diary of Ananda Ranga Pillai (12 vols., Government Press, Madras, 1904–1928).

racetrack / Madison Square Garden operating-sovereign role in the late-19th-c Tammany period, see Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford University Press, 1999), and Mike Wallace, Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919 (Oxford, 2017). Primary-source archives held at the New-York Historical Society.

Czechoslovak-Jewish refugee through British media-empire operator through the post-1991 discovery of the Mirror Group pension expropriation, see Tom Bower, Maxwell: The Outsider (Viking, 1988) and the post-1991 update Maxwell: The Final Verdict (HarperCollins, 1995); also John Preston, Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell (Viking, 2021), the modern reframing treatment.

"water-supply philosophy" of mass industrial output, see John P. Kotter, Matsushita Leadership: Lessons from the 20th Century's Most Remarkable Entrepreneur (Free Press, 1997), the canonical Western scholarly biography; and Matsushita's own Practical Management Philosophy (PHP Institute, 1978; English translation 1980).

furniture canon, see Christian Holmsted Olesen, Wegner: Just One Good Chair (Hatje Cantz, 2014), the canonical retrospective catalogue from the Designmuseum Danmark; and Erik Krogh, Wegner — En Beretning om Stole (Carl Hansen & Søn, 2014).

see Barbara M. Kelly, Expanding the American Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown (SUNY Press, 1993); and David Halberstam, The Fifties (Villard, 1993), ch. 7 (Levittown). For the racially-restrictive deed-covenant record, see the primary-source Levittown deed archive held at the Hempstead Town Clerk's office.

standardization 1955–1984, see John F. Love, McDonald's: Behind the Arches (Bantam, rev. ed. 1995), the canonical Western business-history treatment; and Kroc's own Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's (Henry Regnery, 1977).

12. Status

status: concept per frontmatter.

Concept stage means: this specification exists; no printing partner is committed; no illustrator is contracted; no first proof has been pulled; no software companion app has been scaffolded beyond the existing Almanac figure-data layer. The /workshop/ log tracks the move from concept → bid-quote → illustration-commission → first-proof → production-run → ship with dated entries. Specific milestones (per charter §13⁴):

1. Printing partner outreach. Three quotes from the §6 shortlist

(Make Playing Cards lead, Cartamundi alternate, Legends quality ceiling). Committed by ~2026-12-01. Tracked in /workshop/2026-Q4-codex-deck-printing-partners.md.

1. Illustrator commission. Style brief committed and at least one

sample portrait commissioned by ~2026-12-15. Decision on the illustrator and full-set commission by ~2027-01-15. The single- illustrator path is preferred for stylistic consistency.

1. Forward-pointing Lineage entries. The 8 additional figures

named in §2.3 (Kies, Pillai, Hicks Lord, Maxwell, Matsushita, Wegner, Levitt, Kroc) must be drafted and published as full Lineage canon entries before the Edition IV ship window — they are committed to the canon by their inclusion in the deck. Estimated publication window 2026 Q4 through 2027 Q3 at the one-Lineage-per-week cadence that produced Lineages 01–44.

1. First proof deck pulled and inspected. At least one full

54-card proof from the candidate printing partner, inspected for trim consistency, edge-gilding alignment, cause-graph readability at card scale, and tuck-box foil-stamp registration. Estimated 2027-02.

1. Companion app scaffolded (the stub-text-only version

shippable per §8). Estimated 2026-12 through 2027-02; the high-resolution-render version of the app gates on the full illustration set landing 2027-Q1.

1. Companion essay shipped to /journal/. "The Card as the

Smallest Useful Unit of Canon," ~3,000 words, published two weeks before the Edition IV waitlist opens. Estimated 2027-03.

1. Capsule assembly. All four capsule components (deck + essay

+ companion app + audio set of 24 programs) shipped and tested together before the Edition IV drop. Estimated 2027-04 through 2027-05.

1. Edition IV drop. Target window 2027 Q2 per the charter

§6 Edition IV slot⁴. Run of 1,000 decks, $35–$45 retail. Tuesday morning 9:00 AM Eastern per charter §8 civilized-hours convention⁴.

The status field updates as the milestones land. Production-cycle lead time for a 1,000-unit run at MPC or Cartamundi is approximately 14–16 weeks from production-ready files to ship-from-factory; the 2027 Q2 ship window assumes the illustration set, the cause-graph diagrams, the tuck-box and card production files, the companion essay, and the companion app are all ship-ready by ~2027-02-15.

Every empirical claim about a chosen figure's date range, primary- source citation, or canon-position is locked to the underlying Lineage canon entry's footnote apparatus; any amendment to this spec is numbered and dated, per the canon discipline.

This document is the load-bearing primitive for Stax Edition IV. When the document and a printing-plant first-article disagree, the document wins or the document gets a numbered amendment. Edits ship as Amendment N — DATE.