In addition to the inspirations listed, Crosscut reminds me of various system dynamics (aka systems thinking) modeling software such as ithink.
Er, where can I download or try it?
Looks like Crosscut is an essay on their specific ideas for an interaction mode; https://museapp.com is an app from the same group, which _might_ have some level of Crosscut's functionality implemented (or it might be planned to implement, or it might be completely separate, or...I'm not affiliated, and I only spent a couple minutes poking around so far). Muse does actually look pretty interesting, so I'll probably try it out...
Thanks. Muse is quite different from what they describe, but interesting in its own right. I agree.
They also seem to have some of their projects on GitHub. But not Crosscut.
Which is strange given that they are showing examples of what people have built using Crosscut.