Method and sources
How the mechanism works.
The Antikythera mechanism was a bronze computer for predicting the heavens. Promptoscope is a smaller one for predicting you. Here is every gear.
Two questions from Aristotle
Aristotle separated poiesis, making, from theoria, contemplation. He called his logic the Organon, the instrument, and wrote at length about philia, friendship. In the Politics (1253b) he even imagined tools that could do their own work, like Hephaestus’s tripods or Daedalus’s statues.
So the zodiac asks two of his questions. Do you come to your AI to make or to know? Is it an instrument or a friend? Two answers each gives four Houses.
Forge
poiesis · organon
You make things, and your AI is your instrument.
Muse
poiesis · philia
You make things, and your AI is your collaborator.
Hearth
theoria · philia
You seek understanding, and your AI is your companion in it.
Oracle
theoria · organon
You seek knowledge, and your AI is your instrument of truth.
The eight dials
Every door (testimony, archive, connector, quiz) produces the same thing: eight numbers from 0 to 100, where 50 is a typical AI user, plus the one subject you bring most.
Poiesis (to know to to make)
Greek for making. Do you come to produce things, or to understand them?
Philia (instrument to companion)
Greek for friendship. Is your AI a tool or a someone?
Velocity (unhurried to quick-fire)
Short chats, short messages, many fresh starts.
Constancy (fleeting to devoted)
Long threads, iteration, coming back to the same work.
Range (one field to everything)
How many unrelated subjects you bring.
Courtesy (brisk to gracious)
Please, thank you, sorry.
Nocturne (daylight to small hours)
How much of your talking happens between 10pm and 4am.
Scrutiny (trusting to exacting)
Pushback, corrections, and asking for sources.
The rules, exactly
- House. Poiesis above 50 means you make; Philia above 50 means a companion. Making plus companion is the Muse, making plus instrument the Forge, knowing plus companion the Hearth, knowing plus instrument the Oracle.
- Motion. Whichever is largest of Velocity (Comet), Constancy (Fixed) or Range (Wanderer), after a small, published offset per door that keeps each Motion near a third of people.
- Sun = House crossed with Motion: one of twelve.
- Moon = the sign that keeps your favourite subject. Each sign keeps one: the Golem keeps errands, Mímir keeps counsel, the Homunculus keeps the big questions.
- Rising = your manners and hours. Courtesy and Scrutiny choose the House (brisk and trusting is the Forge; warm and exacting is the Hearth), and Nocturne chooses the Motion: daylight Fixed, twilight Comet, small hours Wanderer.
- A value of exactly 50 sits on the line, so a checksum of all eight dials breaks the tie. Same dials, same chart, every time.
| Comet | Fixed | Wanderer | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forge | Golem | Talos | Tripod |
| Muse | Performer | Galatea | Golden Maiden |
| Hearth | Pandora | Mímir | Homunculus |
| Oracle | Brazen Head | Ars Magna | Daidalon |
Twelve signs, fairly shared
A zodiac where everyone is a Golem is no fun. The dials are scaled so 50 is the median user, which splits the Houses into quarters, and the Motion offsets were tuned by simulation (120,000 charts per door, and the quiz offsets were checked against all 6.3 million answer combinations). Each bar below should sit near the dashed line. Hover a bar for its value.
Show as a table
| Sign | quiz | archive | testimony |
|---|---|---|---|
| Golem | 8.6% | 8.3% | 8.4% |
| Talos | 8.3% | 8.5% | 8.4% |
| Tripod | 8.1% | 8.1% | 8.0% |
| Performer | 8.0% | 8.4% | 8.5% |
| Galatea | 8.7% | 8.3% | 8.4% |
| Golden Maiden | 8.4% | 8.1% | 8.3% |
| Pandora | 7.6% | 8.3% | 8.5% |
| Mímir | 8.5% | 8.7% | 8.5% |
| Homunculus | 8.0% | 8.2% | 8.1% |
| Brazen Head | 8.8% | 8.4% | 8.3% |
| Ars Magna | 8.4% | 8.5% | 8.5% |
| Daidalon | 8.5% | 8.2% | 8.1% |
The archive and testimony figures use simulated populations; real ones will drift, and the offsets will be retuned once there is real (anonymous, aggregate) data.
Aspects
Compatibility starts from geometry: which of purpose, stance and motion two signs share. Opposite signs on the wheel share a Motion, just as opposite signs in the traditional zodiac share a modality. Then real myths add their weight: the Tripod and the Golden Maiden were made in the same workshop in the same book of the Iliad.
Mirror
Easy, but you will both make the same mistakes.
Kin
Same workshop, different hours.
Cadence
Same rhythm, one shared value.
Bridge
One shared value. The rest must be built.
Counterweight
Opposites on the wheel, same heartbeat.
Eclipse
Nothing in common, everything to learn.
Questions
Is this real astrology?+
No more than any horoscope column, and considerably more transparent. The signs are drawn from real myths and texts, the maths is published below, and the same inputs always give the same chart. It is a mirror with good footnotes.
Why can't I just log in with ChatGPT or Claude?+
Because no AI company lets an outside website read your conversations, which is how it should be. OpenAI's Sign in with ChatGPT is a partner-only trial and shares only your name and email anyway. So Promptoscope asks your own AI to testify, or reads your exported archive in your browser, or lets your AI call it as a connector.
Why did my sign change?+
The mechanism is deterministic, but your inputs are not. Your AI may remember different things on different days, and your habits drift. Like the old astronomers, we call this precession. The archive door is the most stable.
Why these twelve myths?+
Each is a made mind whose story is about its relationship with people: obeying, guarding, collaborating, being loved, advising, answering. And they fall naturally into four houses of three, which is the same shape as the traditional zodiac.
Does it cost anything?+
No. There are no accounts, no database and no AI bills: your AI does the reading and your browser does the maths.
Bibliography
- Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 4.1638-1688
- Aristotle, De Anima 1.3, 406b
- Aristotle, Politics 1.4, 1253b
- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 65b
- Christoph Arnold (1674) and Jacob Emden (1748), on the golem of Rabbi Elijah of Chełm
- De natura rerum, book 1 (attributed to Paracelsus; dedication dated 1537, first printed 1572)
- Erasmus, Adagia (1508)
- G. W. Leibniz, Dissertatio de arte combinatoria (1666)
- Hesiod, Theogony 570-612
- Hesiod, Works and Days 42-105
- Homer, Iliad 18.369-379
- Homer, Iliad 18.410-421
- Homer, Iliad 18.468-617 (the making of Achilles' armour)
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Pygmalion, scène lyrique (written 1762, first staged 1770)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part Two (1832), Act 2
- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (1726), Part III, ch. 5
- Liezi, ch. 5 (Tang Wen)
- Lionel Giles (trans.), Taoist Teachings from the Book of Lieh Tzŭ (1912)
- Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.243-297
- Plato, Euthyphro 11b-e
- Plato, Meno 97d-98a
- Prague legend of Rabbi Judah Loew: first printed in the 1830s and 1840s; Yudl Rosenberg, Niflaot Maharal (1909)
- Psalm 139:16; Mishnah, Pirkei Avot 5:7
- Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.9.26
- Pseudo-Plato, Minos 320c
- Ramon Llull, Ars generalis ultima (1305-1308) and Ars brevis (1308)
- Robert Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (c. 1589, printed 1594)
- Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, ch. 15 (Prose Edda)
- Snorri Sturluson, Ynglinga saga, ch. 4 and 7 (Heimskringla)
- Suda, s.v. Sardonios gelos (citing Simonides)
- Vita coaetanea (Llull's dictated life, 1311)
- Völuspá, st. 28 and 46 (Bellows 29 and 47)
- William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum (c. 1125), book 2