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docs: land CANONICAL-NAMES.adoc + record descriptiles/contractiles naming mandate (deprecate 6a2)
Owner mandate 2026-06-30: descriptiles (was 6a2) + contractiles canonical; old names (6a2, agent_instructions) fully deprecated. Lands the previously-orphaned register with a Deprecated-names section + directive block. Full 81-file 6a2->descriptiles migration across standards is separate follow-on work. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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CANONICAL-NAMES.adoc

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// SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-SA-4.0
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// SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Jonathan D.A. Jewell <j.d.a.jewell@open.ac.uk>
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= Canonical Names — Anti-Normalisation Register
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Jonathan D.A. Jewell <j.d.a.jewell@open.ac.uk>
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:toc: macro
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:icons: font
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Names in this estate are deliberately non-standard. Language models and
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metadata bots tend to *normalise* them — silently rewriting a coined name to
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the statistically commoner expansion its letters happen to suggest. That is a
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defect, not a correction.
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The rule is the estate rule: **flag, don't fix.** If a name on this page looks
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"wrong" to you, it is not wrong — it is *ours*. Do not expand, rename,
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translate, or "correct" it to another form. If you believe a genuine error
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exists, raise it with the owner; never silently rewrite it. This is the same
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anti-normalisation principle the `MUST.contractile` files apply to licences,
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applied here to names.
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toc::[]
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== Directive for agents (paste this block into system / custom instructions)
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Put this in the *system* or *custom-instruction* slot of any assistant — not a
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chat message, which decays out of context and lets the prior reassert itself.
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----
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CANONICAL NAMES — DO NOT NORMALISE.
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These names are FIXED. Do not expand, rename, or "correct" them to any other
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form, even when their letters suggest a more common expansion. Use ONLY the
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canonical form. Treat any expansion as a fact to verify against this list, not
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one to generate. If unsure, ask — never guess an expansion.
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- "A2ML" = "Attested Markup Language". NOT "AI to Machine Language" / "AI-to-Machine Language".
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- "BoJ" = "Bundle of Joy". NOT "Bureau of Justice", NOT "Bank of Japan".
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DEPRECATED NAMES — DO NOT REINTRODUCE (estate mandate 2026-06-30):
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- "descriptiles" is the machine-readable metadata family (dir
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`.machine_readable/descriptiles/`). The old name "6a2" is DEPRECATED — never
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write "6a2", migrate it to "descriptiles" on sight.
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- "contractiles" is the normative verb family (Must/Trust/Adjust/Dust/Bust/Intend).
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- "bot_directives" replaces the old "agent_instructions".
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----
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== Register
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[cols="1,2,2,3",options="header"]
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|===
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| Name | Canonical expansion | Reject these (wrong) | What it is
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| **A2ML**
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| Attested Markup Language
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| "AI to Machine Language", "AI-to-Machine Language", "A2 Markup Language"
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| The estate's attested markup language. The letters *read* as "A-to-M-L",
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which is exactly why models mis-expand it — override that reflex; the
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expansion is *Attested Markup Language*.
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| **BoJ**
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| Bundle of Joy
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| "Bureau of Justice", "Bank of Japan", "Board of Justice"
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| Named for the design goal made concrete: a coherent, joyful whole, not a
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mismatch of broken parts adding to the pain of the agentic experience. It is
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not an institution.
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|===
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== Deprecated names — do not reintroduce (MANDATE, 2026-06-30)
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Distinct from the mis-expansion register above: these are estate names that
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have been *renamed*. The old form is **deprecated** and must not be
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reintroduced anywhere (paths, prose, tooling, config). This is the owner's
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mandate of 2026-06-30 — the opportunistic upgrade + refinement layered on top
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of the larger reconciliation of the machine-readable substrate. It applies
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estate-wide, `standards` included.
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[cols="1,1,3",options="header"]
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|===
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| Deprecated (do not use) | Canonical (use this) | Notes
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| **`6a2`**
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| **`descriptiles`**
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| The descriptive machine-readable metadata family: `STATE`, `META`,
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`ECOSYSTEM`, `AGENTIC`, `NEUROSYM`, `PLAYBOOK`, plus `CLADE` and
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`anchors/ANCHOR`. Canonical directory `.machine_readable/descriptiles/`.
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`rsr-template-repo` leads (rename merged); `standards` still carries `6a2`
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in ~81 files and is being migrated. The `.machine_readable/6a2/` path is a
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404 on repos that have migrated — repoint links to `descriptiles/`.
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| **`agent_instructions`**
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| **`bot_directives`**
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| The per-bot directive set (`coverage`, `debt`, `methodology`).
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| _(pair)_
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| **`contractiles`**
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| The normative verb family (Must/Trust/Adjust/Dust/Bust/Intend). Not a rename
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— named here as the established companion of `descriptiles`, so the
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`descriptiles`/`contractiles` pair is stated together as canonical.
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|===
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== Adding a name
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Add a row to the *Register* whenever a name is mis-expanded more than once.
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Populate the *Reject* column with the *exact* wrong forms you have actually
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seen — that specific in-context list is what lets a model suppress the
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mis-expansion. Add a row to *Deprecated names* whenever a name is renamed and
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the old form must not return. Keep the directive block above in sync so it
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stays copy-pasteable.
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This file (`standards/CANONICAL-NAMES.adoc`) is the canonical source. Any copy
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elsewhere (e.g. `dev-notes/glossary/CANONICAL-NAMES.adoc`) mirrors it; if they
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disagree, this one wins.

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