Who made this
The Moat Atlas is a cross-section of 35 defensibility mechanics — the ones that decide whether a product stays hard to copy. This page says who dug it, how, and out of what.
The project
One survey matrix, two sheets. Sheet I is the classification: every mechanic is a shaft, its depth is how long the moat takes to dig, its rock is the kind of defensibility, its thickness is the capital required. Sheet II is the calculator: twelve questions that measure the moat you actually have.
Authorship
Published under the Heretic banner, released under the MIT licence. Corrections to the matrix are welcome — a mechanic in the wrong rock or at the wrong depth is a bug like any other.
Method
Every mechanic was placed on six axes: rock (the kind of defensibility), depth (1 shovel, 2 excavator, 3 drill rig, 4 mine), capital, whether a solo builder can reach it, how it fares as AI commoditises software, and whether it can be rented rather than built. The groupings on sheet I re-lay the same 35 shafts along each of those axes in turn.
Made with
- Astro — static pages, en/ru routing, no framework runtime.
- three.js — the geological cross-section.
- GA4 in Consent Mode v2 — cookieless until you say otherwise.
- Claude Code — prototyping and implementation.
Contact
Write in English — a correction to the matrix, a mechanic that is missing, or an argument about where one belongs.
Licence
MIT. The code, the survey matrix and this copy — fork them, republish them, build on them; keep the copyright notice. The whole atlas is open on GitHub.
Elsewhere
The atlas is one of the things built at GigLabo — a studio for custom software, web apps and AI. Two neighbours from the same workshop:
Sources
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