The word grammar tends to bring back school drills: rules to memorize and errors to avoid. But grammar is what lets a modest set of words say an unlimited number of things. Once you know how a sentence is built, every new word you learn adds to what you can say, and you can understand sentences you have never seen before.
Layers give StrataQuest that kind of structure. Every layer is built the same way: six categories in a fixed order, with engines filling them the way words fill the parts of a sentence.
| In a language | In StrataQuest |
|---|
| Sentence | Layer: one type of object, detected and measured |
| Word order | The six categories, always in the same order |
| Words | Engines, each placed in a category |
| A reference to an earlier sentence | An Import engine, which brings in an image from another layer |
| Paragraph | The analysis: its layers, run in order of their dependencies |
Open an analysis someone else built and you already know where to look: what prepares the image, what is detected, what is corrected, and what is measured. Learning compounds, too. A new engine adds a word and leaves the rules unchanged, so your range grows with every engine you learn.
Ambitious analyses stay clear, because layers linked through Import engines are built from parts that are each simple to read on their own. And teaching can start from the structure: a beginner learns the six categories first, and every example, demonstration, and analysis they meet after that reinforces the same pattern.
Where a script or a free-form pipeline can take any shape, a StrataQuest analysis always has a shape you can recognize. The structure lets you build an analysis, explain it, and hand it to someone else.
Layers work like a grammar: a structure that lets a set of building blocks express almost anything. Learn how one layer is put together and you can read, build, and explain any analysis.
