method

the lanes

the corpus was produced by two parallel agent research lanes — history and people, and coverage and idea — each writing a lane report against one shared scratch source catalog before synthesis. the pattern is the company-research formula proven on earlier hraness dossiers: lane-prefixed source ids frozen upfront, per-claim confidence, and a declared deduplication owner.

the evidence rules

1. every event, quote, and claim carries at least one source id.
2. dates keep their precision — a year, a month, or a day — and approximate dates are labeled rather than sharpened.
3. confidence stays honest: confirmed, reported, and inferred are distinct claims, not stages of the same claim.
4. sources are typed by role — primary, interview, reporting, archive, community — so a claim's foundation is visible before it is read.
5. sentiment labels describe the coverage, not the truth of it.

known gaps

1. the exact public launch day is unresolved — the november 18, 2021 hacker news thread is the firm evidence point, but the precise sequence of opening the sponsors gate is not documented.
2. the funding total is disputed — announced rounds sum to ~$14.7m, while linkedin-derived aggregators show ~$24.1m and dealroom carries an unverified march 2024 row. no verified pre-seed or bridge round exists in the record.
3. ruiz's pre-2021 employer dates (clearscore, inviqa, play) are approximate — linkedin ranges, not contracts — and the adobe turndown is self-reported on podcasts only.
4. engagement type is unresolved for several named collaborators — sunil pai, faraz shaikh, orion reed — listed in company posts without public employment terms.
5. the corporate entity is ambiguous — license texts say 'tldraw, inc.' while the early company blog's footer says 'tldraw gb ltd'; the structure is not publicly documented.
6. demo ownership boundaries are murky — which experiments are company-shipped versus individual-built (carry on, teach, the orion reed work) is reported but not fully mapped.
7. license and pricing specifics are partially undisclosed — commercial license terms, the license-key mechanics beyond the docs, and revenue beyond the self-reported ~$1m first-year figure.
8. the x/twitter corpus is partial — tweet-level material came through archives, link posts, and retellings, not native search.
9. usage figures (400k+ users, 16k+ offline downloads, ~500k mau on ruiz's bio) are self-reported by the company and labeled as such.

corrections

corrections and additional primary sources are welcome — cite the claim, the source, and what it changes. the catalog is designed to be audited, not just read.