Structural stigmergy: a speculative pattern language for metaheuristics

To construct graphs whose quality results from complicated relationships that pervade the entire graph, especially relationships at multiple scales, follow a strategy of repeatedly making local patches to a single graph. Look for small, easily recognized flaws in local areas of the graph and fix them. Add tags to the graph to represent non-local relationships and higher-level structures as individual nodes. The tags then have easily recognized flaws that relate to non-local and higher-level concerns, enabling local patching to set off cascades of local fixes that address those concerns.