ARtBase

The system around my artwork

ARtBase is the local-first artwork operations hub I am building for my own creative practice. It brings together information about artworks, their source files, previews and publications, so that the relationships between them can be understood and managed in one place.

An artwork can have several files, versions and published appearances. Keeping those connections understandable is a different problem from simply storing images in a folder. ARtBase is my working environment for exploring that problem.

My own agents, built for a real workflow

I have built purpose-specific AI agents for ARtBase, alongside the agents in my Diet Coach project. These projects let me investigate what an agent needs beyond access to a language model: relevant tools, persistent context, evidence and clear boundaries.

Within ARtBase, the agent work explores roles such as critic, curator, archive assistant and creative sparring partner. The documented agent architecture separates specialist perspectives and records feedback and lessons for later use. The aim is to ground advice in the artwork and information available to the system.

These are development directions and project capabilities, not a claim that every specialist role is equally mature or independently validated.

Original files remain original

A core project rule is that ARtBase must not modify, rename, move or overwrite original artwork and resource files. Generated previews, caches and outputs belong in managed locations separate from those sources.

The same principle shapes the agents: advice, evidence and proposed actions need to remain distinguishable from changes that have actually been made.

From managing artwork to preserving editable documents

Working on ARtBase also led to OAD, an open document-format concept for long-term, AI-assisted image editing.

The ambition is to preserve more than a flattened final image. Layers, masks, sources, editing intent and provenance should remain available to future software and agents, while the artist-approved visual result stays authoritative.

Development status

ARtBase is in active development. This introduction is based on local project documentation and my description of the project. It does not constitute a live audit of all features. A public repository or release is not announced here.