DEVLOG 01 – Choosing the Basement: Where the Black Box Lives

Today I officially carved out a home for the Emotional Black Box on my site.

Nothing fancy. No AI wizardry yet. Just a simple decision:

The Black Box gets its own universe under /blackbox inside the Next.js /app directory.

That’s the moment it stopped being “a cool idea I talked about” and started being an actual thing I’m building.

The plan:

/app /blackbox layout.tsx // special bunker layout page.tsx // hub: /blackbox

/devlog
  page.tsx            // /blackbox/devlog
  /[slug]
    page.tsx          // /blackbox/devlog/my-first-tape

/podcast
  page.tsx            // /blackbox/podcast

/behind-the-scenes
  page.tsx            // /blackbox/behind-the-scenes

/lore
  page.tsx            // /blackbox/lore

/alpha
  page.tsx            // /blackbox/alpha

This does a couple important things:

The Emotional Black Box is not just a feature tucked into the rest of the site. It’s a section, with its own look, mood, and story.

I can wrap everything under /blackbox in its own layout, so it feels like you stepped into a different room of the AIBRY universe.

Devlogs, podcast episodes, lore, and the actual AI interface all live under the same “vault” instead of being scattered all over the site.

I also decided this whole thing should feel like it lives in the basement of the website: dark, static, stripped-down UI, like you’re sitting in front of an old tape deck with bad intentions.

Next steps from here:

Build the /blackbox layout so it has its own header and bunker aesthetic

Set up the simple devlog index page

Start wiring up how I’ll store entries (static first, dynamic later)

Nothing “impressive” happened today in terms of AI. But this is the part most people skip talking about: the decision of where the project lives.

This is me officially giving the Emotional Black Box a room in the house. The wiring hell and emotional chaos come next.