About Quana Labs
Quana Labs is an independent research and development lab, run by one person, Chandler Snively. It investigates, experiments, builds, reverse-engineers and writes things down, across whatever field the curiosity leads to.
Some of the work is careful engineering or a proper experiment with a control. Some of it is an absurdly over-engineered answer to a question nobody asked, pursued because it was interesting. Both are welcome here, and both get the same treatment: a numbered record, the method, the evidence, and a history of every revision.
The research archive is the centre of the lab. Projects, tools and datasets live alongside it, each linked to the entries that document how they work and what was learned building them.
The name
Quana is pronounced KWAH-nuh. It is a word invented in childhood and used as an online name for nearly two decades; it does not mean anything else, which is part of its appeal. The Labs came later, when the notes and experiments needed somewhere to live.
How the lab works
- Curiosity without boundaries. No field is out of scope: software, AI, reverse engineering, games, biology, geospatial data, simulation, and wherever the next rabbit hole goes.
- Claims carry their evidence. Every claim is marked with how well it is supported, from a labelled hypothesis to a result that survived a check that could have failed.
- Failures stay on the record. Refuted ideas and inconclusive experiments are published and kept, because they save the next person the same trip.
- Nothing is silently rewritten. Every entry has a revision letter and a table of what changed and when. Addresses never break, and superseded entries point to their replacements.
- AI use is disclosed. Entries say when AI tools helped and how. Hypotheses proposed by an AI system carry their own label, separate from the author's, until someone tests them.
- Verification means what it says. Checks are made by the author unless an entry lists an independent review. Nothing here claims outside verification it did not get.
The full rules are themselves an entry: QL-0001, How Quana Labs keeps its records.
How to read an entry
Every entry opens with a title block, the boxed record beside the text, laid out like the title block of an engineering drawing. It carries:
- Document, the identifier, such as
QL-0042: permanent, never reused, the way to cite the entry. - Rev., the revision letter: A is the first issue, and each recorded revision moves it on a letter. The revision table at the end of the entry says what changed.
- Class, the field and section, as a code such as
RE.2. - Kind, Status, Evidence and AI use, defined below.
Kinds
| Kind | What it is |
|---|---|
| Investigation | A worked line of inquiry: the question, the method, what was observed and what it means. |
| Experiment | A test with a stated hypothesis, a control that could disprove it, and a recorded result. |
| Finding | One specific, citeable result, with the evidence behind it and the limits of what it shows. |
| Reference | Technical documentation kept current: formats, APIs, tables, procedures, cheat sheets. |
| Essay | Long-form writing: explanation, history, argument or retrospective. |
| Note | A short field note: an observation, a trick, a pointer worth keeping. |
Status
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| In progress | Published and still being worked on. Expect additions and corrections. |
| Stable | Complete for its stated scope. Revised only when something changes. |
| Archived | Kept for the record and no longer maintained. May be out of date. |
| Superseded | Replaced by a newer entry, which the notice at the top links to. Kept for the record. |
Evidence
Evidence is marked the way a drawing checker marks a sheet: highlighted when confirmed, struck through in red when refuted, outlined with a dashed line while untested. An AI system's untested idea gets a blue dashed outline, the colour of construction lines that are not part of the finished drawing.
| Evidence | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Verified | Confirmed by a check that could have failed: a control, a second method or a second source. Checked by the author unless the entry lists an independent review. |
| Reproduced | Observed repeatedly under stated conditions, but not yet put through a check that could have failed. |
| Observed | Seen at least once and recorded as it happened. Not yet repeated. |
| Hypothesis | Proposed by the author and not yet tested. Speculation, labelled as such so it can be tested or discarded. |
| AI hypothesis | Proposed by an AI system and not yet tested. A lead worth recording, not a claim; nobody has checked it against evidence. |
| Inconclusive | Tested, but the result does not decide the question either way. |
| Refuted | Tested and shown to be false. Kept on purpose: a negative result saves the next person the trip. |
AI use
| AI use | Meaning |
|---|---|
| None | Researched and written without AI assistance. |
| AI-assisted | AI tools helped with parts of the work (drafting, code, analysis or search). The author checked the result. |
| AI-generated | Mostly produced by an AI system and published for the record. Its claims have not all been checked by a person unless the entry says which. |
Links between entries
Links inside the text point to other entries; hover over one to preview it. At the end of every entry, Referenced by lists the entries that link to it and Related entries lists those that share its project, series or tags.
Citing an entry
Cite by identifier and revision: Quana Labs QL-0042, rev. C. Every entry has a permanent address,
https://quanalabs.com/n/42/, that always redirects to its current page, and a Cite this entry
section with a plain citation and BibTeX. Investigations, experiments and references number their sections, so a
passage can be cited as QL-0042 §3.1. Downloadable files carry SHA-256 checksums, listed on the
entry and on the Data page.
Following along
Two feeds: new entries, and every change including revisions. The change log shows the same history on one page, and the open questions page shows what the lab is still trying to find out.
Corrections, questions and collaboration ideas are welcome at lab@quanalabs.com. Please cite the entry identifier.
Colophon
The site is static: plain Markdown files, built by Astro and indexed for search by Pagefind, so it needs no server or database and loads no third-party scripts. Text is set in Charis SIL, a descendant of Matthew Carter's Charter; headings and interface in Barlow, after the DIN lettering of technical drawings; code in JetBrains Mono. The visual language borrows from engineering document control, where a drawing carries its number, its revision letter and its checker's marks. The mark is a Q drawn as a ruled square, its tail breaking out through the frame.
© 2026 Chandler Snively. Text licensed under CC BY 4.0 unless an entry says otherwise; code and tools under the MIT licence.