The stack, from open sources¶

The city’s technology is bought, not built, so its shape can be read from who supplies what. A small, shared set of vendors and standard interfaces recurs from one city state to the next, so one stack largely predicts another: the pack recognised once, the layers fall into place before a target is named. What differs between them is rarely the parts and mostly the wiring, the local integrations and half-finished migrations that no brochure advertises. It is the machinery the invitation opens, and knowing who built each part is knowing where it is likely to give.