The conventions, and the words they use

placement_classes

Every declared path belongs to exactly one placement class (CR-036). SINGLETON — exactly one, at vault root; a second instance is a finding: INDEX.md, _inbox/, _outbox/, _config/, .handoff/, .knowledge/. PER_FOLDER — appears in every folder of its kind: _meta.yaml, _insights.yaml, _tasks.yaml, _manifest.md, .archive/. PER_FOLDER presence can be CONDITIONAL (CR-040): a folder declaring workflows.task_ledger.mode external or none legitimately has no _tasks.yaml, and that absence is a declaration, not missing data — readers must not treat it as an empty or stalled folder. PER_BOUNDARY — appears where the boundary it describes actually applies: CLAUDE.md, _ops.yaml, CHANGELOG.md, README.md.

prefix_conventions

The prefix answers ONE question: is this surface READ in everyday work? (CR-034). Underscore = read routinely, sorts first: folders (_inbox/, _outbox/, _contacts/, _config/, _private/, _products/, _infrastructure/) and structure-bearing files that recur in every folder of a kind (_tasks.yaml, _insights.yaml, _meta.yaml, _manifest.md, _ops.yaml, _INDEX-*). Dot = read rarely, on demand, or never. Archive is ALWAYS .archive, never _archive. A dated post never takes underscore — it takes YYMMDD-.

The test. is this surface read in everyday work? yes -> underscore, no -> dot

Exceptions. .knowledge/; .handoff/_archive

prefix_known_exception

.knowledge/ is READ frequently — INDEX.md is the documented first stop for any knowledge question — so by the rule above it would take an underscore. It keeps the dot for compatibility: the name is established in CR-027, INDEX.md, vault CLAUDE.md and every [[wiki]] link, and renaming costs more than the consistency gains. Declared here as a KNOWN EXCEPTION rather than hidden behind a rule it breaks. Do not cite .knowledge/ as precedent for dot-prefixing a new read surface. SECOND DECLARED EXCEPTION: .handoff/_archive keeps its underscore against the archive-is-always-.archive rule, because .handoff/ carries a TOTAL BLOCK (CR-033) — the surface is not touched by any skill, including to rename it. Exception by necessity, not by preference.

generated_view_isolation

A generated READ view that lives among its own source material must be isolated STRUCTURALLY, not by a skip flag. Put it in a hidden subfolder (<folder>/.status/current.md) rather than beside the sources as <folder>/_status.md. Reason: CR-033 found four skills reaching .handoff/ files despite an explicit skip-list, because they globbed on the YYMMDD- filename prefix rather than consulting the list. A per-folder markdown file among meeting documents is easier to hit by accident than one in a dot-folder. The dot here does not mean rarely read — the user opens it deliberately; it means unreachable by scanners, which is the .knowledge/wiki/ pattern applied at folder scope.

system_file_language

System and structure files carry ENGLISH names regardless of the language of their content: _config/priority.md, _config/naming-prefix.md, _inbox/_frame.md, .status/current.md. Content stays in the vault's working language. Applies going FORWARD — the derived registers with Swedish names (_INDEX-agare.md, _INDEX-koppling.md, _INDEX-maskiner.md, _INDEX-objektmodell.md, _INDEX-verksamheter.md) are read by scripts and renaming them costs more than the consistency gains; the generated wiki articles under .knowledge/wiki/ likewise keep the language of the corpus they summarise.

identifier_language

Identifiers are ENGLISH; the words a person reads may be in any language, and are data rather than literals in code. This covers schema field names, enum values, status keys, config keys, dictionary keys and variable names — everything a second tool must agree with in order to interoperate. Display text (a manifest's Status wording, an external board's column name, a generated view's headings) stays in the vault's working language and lives in a settings or vocabulary file, so changing it is a settings change rather than a code change. Where an identifier and its label were historically the same string, the LABEL keeps the existing spelling: renaming a key costs nothing, while renaming a label changes what an external system or a person sees. A reader meeting a value it does not recognise should tolerate it rather than silently treat it as the default — see task_statuses, where recognising only the canonical set made finished tasks count as outstanding. THIS DECLARATION FOLLOWS ITS OWN RULE: where a field is named here, it is named by its identifier, not by the label a vault happens to write it under. Five entries described a manifest's fields as Status/Kanal/Kontakt until 2026-09-21, which reads as Swedish identifiers in a public contract and invites a tool to hardcode the label.

filename_role_keyword

A filename is YYMMDD-<role>-<description>.md (CR-089). The ROLE keyword is an identifier — scripts and skills select files by it — so it is ENGLISH and comes from `terms:` (`file:`). The description stays in the working language and keeps å/ä/ö (CR-021). FORWARD ONLY: existing files are never renamed; every reader also accepts the term's `legacy_file:` keywords, and a check flags only files dated on or after the release. A series' declared note_suffix / agenda_suffix always wins over the default keyword, because a series that changed shape mid-history reads as a broken carry-forward chain.

one_term_per_concept

Every concept has one term, declared once in `terms:` (CR-089). Skill names are nouns (the place or object owned) unless declared `kind: command_name`; subcommands are verbs, or `<object> <verb>`; a verb means the same thing in every skill; the loop's step ids ARE the command verbs; anything outside the loop is named for what it repairs or explains. A localized word not declared in a term's language column is drift. `avoid:` phrases are checked by scripts/check-terms.py.

write_ownership

Independent of the prefix, every surface declares who may write it. HUMAN: _inbox/_capture.md, _inbox/_frame.md, _meta.yaml, .handoff/ (once, then frozen). GENERATED — hand-editing forbidden: .knowledge/wiki/ (/insights synthesize, CR-027), _INDEX-maskiner.md and _INDEX-koppling.md (scan.py), the personal working-document view (CR-035). MIXED: _tasks.yaml, _insights.yaml. A generated surface that is edited by hand loses its next regeneration silently — which is why the property is declared rather than inferred from the prefix.

audit_lifecycle

An audit or review document lives in _inbox/ only WHILE IN USE. Once its decisions are made and executed it moves to _inbox/.archive/. An audit left in place after execution becomes a competing source of truth against the working document (observed 260907). _inbox/ normally holds at most three CONTENT files: the working document, one active audit, one active review. Declared system files do not count against the ceiling (_capture.md, _frame.md, _inbox.yaml, _tasks.yaml) — they are infrastructure of the surface, not material passing through it. More than three content files means something has taken up residence, which CR-025 forbids in principle but does not measure.

stale_vs_junk

Stale is not junk. A document that WAS current and is now outdated is archived to .archive/ (never deleted). Material with no vault destination goes to .ephemeral/ and may die (swept after 14 days, CR-024). Conflating the two loses history or retains rubbish.