The spine that compounds

The Registry

Every rabbit hole reads this before it searches, and feeds it after. Over time it becomes a vetted map of who tells the truth and who is selling — 59 sources so far. The heart of each entry is why it's trusted: if we can't name why a source has no incentive to mislead, it doesn't belong here yet.

Art

Tier 1 · institutional · open · enMetropolitan Museum — Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
period/movement essays written by curatorial staff, object-anchoredWhy trusted: museum curatorial scholarship; educational mandate, not sales

Botany

Tier 2 · institutional · open · enGBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility
aggregated, georeferenced occurrence records from museums/herbariaWhy trusted: intergovernmental research infrastructure; aggregates specimen data, sells nothing
Tier 2 · institutional · open · enPlants of the World Online (POWO) — Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
accepted names, distribution, descriptions for vascular plantsWhy trusted: national botanical institution; taxonomic authority, not a vendor
Tier 3 · obsessed-non-institutional · open · en, multiiNaturalist
field-verified, geolocated observations by naturalistsWhy trusted: practitioner community; research-grade observations are peer-confirmed

Code

Tier 2 (peer-reviewed academic)ScienceDirect — Electrolint paper (2021)
Why trusted: The only peer-reviewed academic paper on Electron security misconfigurations in this run. Findings contributed to Electron changing two default security settings. CAUTION: paywalled — abstract-level only. Full text not yet accessed. Treat abstract-level claims accordingly.
Tier 2–3 (core maintainer, practitioner primary writing for peers)Felix Rieseberg — "Things People Get Wrong About Electron"
Why trusted: Rieseberg is a named, identified Electron core maintainer. Practitioner-level writing, not commercial documentation. The most credible single counter-argument source for common Electron criticism. Concrete examples, named benchmarks.
Tier 2–3 (Google case study, primary practitioner account)web.dev — "Deprecating Excalidraw Electron in favor of the Web version"
Why trusted: The Excalidraw team's first-person account of migrating away from Electron to PWA. Specific pain points (platform-specific menu code, auto-update gaps, code signing friction) and specific replacement APIs (File System Access, File Handling). Published on Google's developer platform.
Tier 2–3 (institutional security-research blog, primary-adjacent technical history)Google Project Zero — technical history blog posts
Why trusted: Google's own security-research team publishing detailed, dated, technically precise histories of specific systems (the Windows Registry adventure series) as part of vulnerability-research write-ups. Highly specific, falsifiable technical claims; no commercial incentive to embellish a feature's origin story.
Tier 2–3 (named practitioner-authority primary writing; coiner of "microservices" as a public-facing term)Martin Fowler — martinfowler.com
Why trusted: Fowler was present at the 2011 workshop that named microservices and is the field's most-cited definitional source. His site carries dated, signed essays, not vendor marketing. Read directly (not just found) for this run.
Tier 3 (canonical source repository)GitHub — Electron repository (electron/electron)
Why trusted: The canonical codebase. Stats (122k+ stars, 1,951 releases, ~424k dependent projects) are accurate to the date of access. Primary language split (C++ 54.6%, TypeScript 34.3%) visible here. MIT license confirmed.
Tier 3 (independent engineering org, real production comparison)DoltHub Engineering Blog — "Electron vs. Tauri" (2025)
Why trusted: An engineering team that built in both frameworks compares concrete architectural decisions. No affiliate relationship; no product to sell. Includes unresolved limitations of Tauri (Windows .msix, macOS universal binary).
Tier 3 (independent obsessed historical-technology reference, individually maintained)historyofinformation.com — Jeremy Norman's "History of Information"
Why trusted: A long-running, individually authored and dated historical-technology reference site with specific citations per entry (EDSAC subroutine libraries, Wilkes/ Wheeler/Gill, System Development Corporation's 1962 "data-base" coinage). Not commercial, not vendor-affiliated; maintained by Jeremy Norman, a documented rare-book and history-of-science dealer and bibliographer.
Tier 3 (independent practitioner, named author)Federico Terzi — "Why Electron Is a Necessary Evil"
Why trusted: Named author with documented experience building both Electron and native apps. Specific resource comparisons (WhatsApp 254 MB vs Telegram 130 MB RAM). Honest about real costs. No vendor affiliation.
Tier 3 (individually maintained, citation-sourced etymological reference — Douglas Harper)etymonline.com (Online Etymology Dictionary)
Why trusted: Long-standing, individually maintained etymology reference drawing on standard academic etymological dictionaries (OED, Klein's, Barnhart). The correct tier for pre-computing word-origin claims (protocol, schema, kernel, index) that compound code+linguistics holes depend on.
Tier 3 (official commercial documentation)Electron — Official Documentation
Why trusted: Authoritative technical reference for the framework: architecture docs, IPC, performance, security model, "Why Electron" rationale. Not neutral on comparisons with alternatives — corroborate those claims.
Tier 3 (official commercial documentation)Tauri — Official documentation (v2)
Why trusted: Authoritative technical reference for Tauri v2. Security model and capability system documented with genuine nuance (honest about what Rust safety does and does not guarantee). Vendor, so architecture advantages require corroboration.
Tier 3 (official documentation)Flutter — Architectural Overview (official docs)
Why trusted: The most complete single-source technical account of Flutter's architecture: Impeller rendering, Dart AOT/JIT, the embedder layer, platform channels vs FFI, desktop vs mobile differences. Read in full.
Tier 3 (official Microsoft documentation — primary for decision rationale)VS Code — "Why did we build Visual Studio Code?"
Why trusted: Microsoft's own account of why VS Code uses Electron. The decision to choose Electron over nw.js is stated; the Monaco heritage is explained. Primary for the "why the default" question.
Tier 3 (official project history)Electron — Official Blog
Why trusted: Most reliable source for Electron project history, versioning milestones, governance. "10 Years of Electron" is the canonical project history document.
Tier 3 (official project history)Qt Wiki — Qt History
Why trusted: Authoritative version history maintained by The Qt Company. Full timeline from 1990 concept through current releases. Corroborate licensing claims against the official licensing documentation (qt.io/licensing).
Tier 3 (primary practitioner — major Electron user contributing upstream)Figma Engineering — "Introducing BrowserView for Electron"
Why trusted: Figma is one of the most technically demanding Electron users. Documents a real architectural problem (webview performance gap), the solution (BrowserView), and contribution back to the framework. Named engineering org.
Tier 3 (Russian-language practitioner community — companion surface to habr.com) · ruHabr Q&A (qna.habr.com)
Why trusted: The Q&A companion to Habr proper; same editorially-adjacent Russophone developer community already registered above (RUVDS Electron article). Used to confirm the framework-vs-library inversion-of-control distinction in the origin developer- culture language — a genuine origin-language search returning confirmation.
Tier 3 (Russian-language practitioner community) · ruHabr (RUVDS) — Electron history article (Russian)
Why trusted: Habr is the Russophone developer community's primary platform, with community editor review before publication. This article (2025) carries independent framing on Electron's history not found in English sources. Read in original by an operator-verifiable reader.

Ecology

Tier 1 · institutional · open · enUniversity of Florida Termite Collection (UFTC) — termitediversity.org
global termite taxonomy + identification — species-by-genera, SOLDIER morphology + ENTERIC-VALVE diagnostics, field photos, 48,282-colony database. The specialist ID authority for Isoptera (skews New World; genus diagnostics global).Why trusted: curated by Rudolf Scheffrahn (UF), the standing termite-systematics authority; peer-reviewed lineage (Scheffrahn 1983→; Hellemans et al. 2024 Nature); a collection, not a shop

Gaming

Tier 1 · primary · open · en, zh, ja, multiHoYoverse — official news & Developer Insights
official announcements, soundtrack/MV releases, developer accounts of music & designWhy trusted: first-party developer documentation; primary for intent. Commercial party — corroborate facts.
Tier 1 · primary · open · multiOfficial soundtrack albums / credits (streaming + liner)
authoritative track titles, album/region attribution, ensemble & composer creditsWhy trusted: the primary record for who composed/performed what; settles album-attribution disputes
Tier 2 · institutional · open · en, multiHoYoLab (official community / developer posts)
official OST track listings, symphony-performance notes, developer community postsWhy trusted: developer-run platform; useful for OST/album/ensemble facts the Fandom wiki also carries
Tier 3 · obsessed-non-institutional · unstable # same 403-to-bots caveat as above · multiFandom wikis (general — per game)
per-game canonical lore/credits wikisWhy trusted: the community-canon layer for most games; cite via reachable mirror/snippet, flag access
Tier 3 · obsessed-non-institutional · api-only # HTML 403s + Cloudflare JS-gates even browser-UA; reach via api.php (works) · enGenshin Impact Wiki (Fandom)
CANONICAL for lore, characters, regions, soundtrack credits, boss/encounter detailsWhy trusted: obsessed community wiki, source-cited; the reference for game canon. HTML blocks bots — use the MediaWiki API.
Tier 3 · obsessed-non-institutional · open · enVGMO — Video Game Music Online
specialist game-music journalism with primary composer interviews (Yu-Peng Chen, etc.)Why trusted: long-running specialist outlet; conducts primary composer interviews — closest to intent
Tier 4 · secondary · open · enTV Tropes — game music & lore pages
reception, track standing, pattern-tracking across a game's music/storyWhy trusted: qualified secondary aggregator; example-cited. Verify claims against primary/canonical.

Linguistics

Tier 1 · institutional · open · fr, enHAL — open archive (France)
multidisciplinary open archive incl. French linguistics fieldwork & grammarsWhy trusted: national open-science archive; author-deposited scholarship, no commerce
Tier 1 · institutional · open · ja, enJ-STAGE
Japanese scholarly platform; linguistics, ecology, many fields (origin-language)Why trusted: run by the Japan Science and Technology Agency; primary scholarship, partial-verifiable language
Tier 2 (Tier 1 for the peer-reviewed articles it hosts) · institutional · open · ruCyberLeninka
open-access Russian-language scholarship; linguistics, philology (read in original)Why trusted: open scientific library of Russian academic journals; non-commercial, operator-verifiable

Medicine

Tier 1 · institutional · abstract-only (reviews; full text often subscription) · enCochrane Library
systematic reviews — the top of the clinical-evidence hierarchyWhy trusted: independent network producing systematic reviews; no product to sell
Tier 2 (Tier 1 for the individual peer-reviewed trials it indexes) · institutional · open (abstracts; full text varies) · enPubMed
biomedical literature index; human-clinical evidenceWhy trusted: US National Library of Medicine; indexes trials, distinguishes evidence levels
Tier 2 (Tier 1 for the primary trials it hosts in full) · institutional · open · enPMC (PubMed Central)
free full-text archive of biomedical literature; open primary papersWhy trusted: NIH/NLM open-access archive; hosts full peer-reviewed text, non-commercial

Music

Tier 1 · primary · abstract-only · enJournal of the American Musicological Society (JAMS)
peer-reviewed historical musicology — the discipline's record of recordWhy trusted: scholarly society journal; peer review; no commercial stake in any artist
Tier 1 · primary · open # MTO is open-access; Spectrum partial · enMusic Theory Spectrum / Music Theory Online (Society for Music Theory)
analytical music theory — harmony, meter, form, voice-leadingWhy trusted: scholarly society; MTO is open-access peer review; analysis for peers, not sales
Tier 1 · primary · paywalled # follow citations; abstracts open · enPopular Music (Cambridge) · Journal of Popular Music Studies · Ethnomusicology
scholarship on popular music, scenes, and ethnomusicological fieldworkWhy trusted: academic peer review on exactly the material pop dives need; cites primary work
Tier 1 · primary · open · multiThe artist's own words (interviews · liner notes · verified statements)
intent, meaning, process — the only authority on what a maker meantWhy trusted: the maker is primary on their own intent; cite the actual statement, not a paraphrase
Tier 2 · institutional # analytical tool — measurable data · open · enHooktheory — Theorytab database
key, chord progression, meter, and complexity scores for thousands of songs (tier A)Why trusted: methodology-driven crowd analysis; provides measurable sonic data, not opinion. Cross-check transcriptions.
Tier 2 · institutional · open · enLibrary of Congress — recorded sound / National Jukebox
historical recordings archive — primary audio for historical worksWhy trusted: national archive; preservation mandate, no commercial stake
Tier 2 · institutional · open · enOpen Music Theory (Milne Publishing / SUNY Geneseo)
university open textbook — meter, time signatures, chord theory fundamentalsWhy trusted: university-published peer-reviewed open textbook; ideal citation for explaining theory
Tier 3 · obsessed-non-institutional · open · en, multiMuseScore community transcriptions
practitioner-level structural discussion; community transcriptions (cross-check)Why trusted: obsessed-practitioner discussion; use substantive, sourced threads — skip the chatter
Tier 3 · obsessed-non-institutional · open · en, multir/musictheory
practitioner-level structural discussion; community transcriptions (cross-check)Why trusted: obsessed-practitioner discussion; use substantive, sourced threads — skip the chatter
Tier 3 · obsessed-non-institutional · open · enThe Range Place
technical vocal range / register analysis by obsessed practitionersWhy trusted: methodology-driven community vocal analysis; the antidote to "haunting voice" hand-waving
Tier 3 · obsessed-non-institutional · open · enThe Vocal Files
technical vocal range / register analysis by obsessed practitionersWhy trusted: methodology-driven community vocal analysis; the antidote to "haunting voice" hand-waving
Tier 3 · obsessed-non-institutional · open · enTV Tropes — music pages
tracking lyrical / structural / vocal patterns across a discography, song-levelWhy trusted: qualified secondary aggregator; granular, example-cited pattern-tracking. Verify claims.
Tier 3 · obsessed-non-institutional · open · enUniversity newspaper concert journalism (e.g. Emory Wheel)
direct-observation live-performance documentation (the live-energy question)Why trusted: eyewitness reviews with no commercial stake; primary for what a live version did
Tier 4 · secondary · open · enAlbum of the Year
aggregate listener reception — documents that a comparison is widely felt, not that it's trueWhy trusted: useful only as evidence of reception/impression; never authoritative for sound or intent
Tier 4 · secondary · open · enRateYourMusic
aggregate listener reception — documents that a comparison is widely felt, not that it's trueWhy trusted: useful only as evidence of reception/impression; never authoritative for sound or intent
Tier 4 · secondary · open · multiWikipedia — music & album pages
formation facts, personnel, credits — as a pointer; follow references, never cite the articleWhy trusted: well-referenced for music; value is the citation trail, not the prose

Mycology

Tier 2 · institutional · open · enBurke Herbarium — University of Washington
specimen + image collection; North American fungi, species comparisonWhy trusted: university natural-history herbarium; specimen-based, non-commercial
Tier 2 · institutional · open · en (Latin nomenclature)Index Fungorum
authoritative fungal nomenclatureWhy trusted: maintained by mycological institutions for naming, not sales
Tier 2 · institutional · open · enIUCN Red List
global conservation assessments incl. fungi (e.g. Hericium erinaceus, 2019)Why trusted: intergovernmental conservation authority; assesses status, sells nothing
Tier 2 · institutional · open · en (Latin nomenclature)MycoBank
fungal names registry + nomenclatural data; companion to Index FungorumWhy trusted: run by the Westerdijk Institute for naming/typification, not commerce
Tier 2 · institutional · open · zhYunnan Biodiversity Digital Encyclopedia (云南生物多样性数字百科)
Yunnan state biodiversity atlas; wild distribution, conservation (read in original)Why trusted: provincial state natural-science publication; biodiversity record, not sales
Tier 3 · obsessed-non-institutional · open · enMidwest American Mycological Information (MAMI)
regional mycological society; host trees, ecological role, season (N. America)Why trusted: practitioner mycology community; field knowledge, no product