Kladde 26: questions
How do I mark a work as Kladde 26?
Say so, on or beside the work, and point to the manifesto — a link, or a short quotation. Then give the reader a route to the workings: the workings themselves, or a durable link to them. A line at the foot of the piece will do. As an example, the footer on our own work reads:
This work has shared workings, in line with Kladde 26.
That is an example and not a required form of words. On our own site the workings sit beside the story, so the footer doesn’t need to carry their address; a piece reprinted elsewhere would need that link in the line itself.
Nobody issues the mark and nobody checks it. You are averring that you have worked to these terms, much as a photographer might state that an image is unretouched. The workings are what let a reader test the claim.
Where can I see examples?
The first examples known to us are at john.hartnup.uk/fiction. Most of the stories there carry their workings, which range from lightly edited transcripts to shorter accounts of the chats that produced them.
I create with AI, and I consider myself the sole author. Why do I need this?
If that honestly describes what you do, that’s absolutely fine. Kladde doesn’t tell you what to call yourself. Publishing your workings simply lets your audience make up their own mind, and if your account of your own role is accurate, the workings will support it.
What if I just don’t want to do this?
Then don’t. Nobody is making anyone do anything. Kladde is opt-in, and it asks nothing of writers who haven’t taken it up.
Isn’t this a lot of effort and overhead?
It needn’t be, and AI can help. Our own Kladde workings have been produced by simply asking the AI agent to produce a transcript of its own chat. For a larger work, with chats spread out or lost, it’s enough to collect together whatever you can.
A full transcript is far too long and detailed. Does it have to be one?
No. The goal is not a forensic record, but enough information for the reader to understand how much humanity went into the work. It could be a few paragraphs describing the writing process at a high level. It could be edited highlights of a transcript. It could be the full thing. For a novel, it might be enough to show the edited workings for a single chapter, demonstrating the spirit in which the whole was written.
Won’t most readers ignore the workings?
Most of them, yes, and they’re not expected to do otherwise. The fact that the workings are there may be reassurance enough — much as an appendix or a translator’s note is in a printed book. A few readers will read every word. Some will skim for the gist. Many will never click.
Can’t the workings simply be falsified?
They could. Again, they are not forensic evidence. Someone determined to misrepresent how they work can already do so by saying nothing at all, which is easier.
Does Kladde tell me how much AI I’m allowed to use?
No. Kladde says nothing whatsoever about how the writing is made — what the model may draft, how much of it may stand, how little of it is yours. It governs the telling, not the making. This is the main point on which it differs from Dogme 95, whose rules constrain what a director may do.
Do I have to state what proportion of the work was mine?
No, and the manifesto explicitly refuses it: no percentage, no ratio, no metric claiming a share of the work. We believe that in a real-world collaboration this is impossible to measure in any fruitful manner, and the number would be impossible to interpret meaningfully. Show the workings and let the reader judge.
What if the AI only helped with research or ideas, and I wrote every word?
It’s up to you whether you believe Kladde adds value, for any given work. In this case, if you do choose to use Kladde, simply say what you did. The manifesto covers ideas as well as language, because an idea can matter more to a piece than the sentence it arrived in. Workings that show a model supplying research and a human writing the prose are perfectly good workings, and they make a claim in your favour.
Does everything I publish have to carry the mark?
No. Kladde applies to the work you choose to publish under it. Lars von Trier did not shoot every film under Dogme. A writer may publish some work as Kladde and some not, and there’s no inconsistency in that.
Be aware, though, that if most of your work carries the mark and some of it silently doesn’t, you are strongly implying that the unmarked work is AI-free, whether you meant to or not.
Is this only for online publishing?
Not at all. It may not be practical to print the workings, but you can print a URL that links to them. Link shorteners and QR codes work here as they do for any other bridge from the physical world to the web.
What if the work is reprinted somewhere the workings can’t follow?
Then a durable link goes with it, or at minimum a line telling the reader where to find them. The requirement is that the reader is never left holding the work with no route back to how it was made.
The workings contain private material. Can I edit them?
Yes — and then say that you have. Real names, third parties who didn’t ask to be in your chat logs, material you’re not free to publish: all of these are ordinary reasons to cut or anonymise. What the manifesto asks is that the editing is declared, so that an edited transcript isn’t passed off as a complete one.
Who is responsible if the model got a fact wrong?
You are. Every error in the finished text is the writer’s — the invented fact, the libel, the bias, the sentence that is merely wrong — regardless of which of you produced it. Disclosing that a model was involved is not a way of disowning what it wrote.
Why “Kladde”? And why 26?
A kladde is the rough book a Danish schoolchild works in before producing the renskrift, the fair copy that gets handed in. The renskrift is what everyone publishes; the kladde is what everyone throws away. The name is Danish as a nod to Dogme 95, the tone of which inspired this one. The 26 follows Dogme 95’s habit of dating itself, and carries the same implication: this is of its moment, and something better should replace it.
Is there an organisation? Do I need to register, or ask permission?
No. There is nothing to join and nobody to ask. Adopt the practice, link to the manifesto, copy it, fork it, or do all of this without mentioning it at all.
Does this apply to anything other than writing?
The manifesto is written about writing, in the way that “open source” was written about software. If it turns out to be useful for images, music, film or anything else, nothing prevents it, and no permission is required. It simply doesn’t presume to speak for crafts it doesn’t practise.
The manifesto doesn’t cover my case. What do I do?
Whatever you think right. Kladde 26 is short, and there is a great deal it doesn’t specify: whether a spellchecker, predictive text or a grammar tool crosses the line; whether you name the model you used; what to do when a contract or an NDA stops you publishing a transcript; what to call the file your workings live in; whether research counts differently from drafting.
None of these have answers here, because there is nobody to give them. Kladde 26 has no membership, no enforcement and no authority to interpret itself. Decide for yourself, and publish your own variant if your reading differs from ours. The only thing against the spirit of it would be settling such a question quietly, in a way you would rather a reader didn’t know about.