---
profile: entities
outbound:
  entities: [depends-on, required-by, runs-on, hosts, uses, produces, consumes, maintains, owns, owned-by, authored, involves, member-of, alternative-to, implements, part-of, composition, supersedes, derived-from, adapted-from, see-also]
  concepts: [implements, exemplifies, rests-on, applies-when, operates-on, invokes, authored, alternative-to, see-also]
  sources: [evidenced-by, defined-in, see-also]
  comparisons: [compares-with, see-also]
  gtd: [see-also]
required_by_stack: false
---

# kb/entities/ - Collection Contract

Concrete things that exist: a project, a deployed system, a CLI tool, a technology, a person or
an organization. If it can be pointed at, it is an entity.

**Quality goal:** pointability + currency - a reader should come away knowing what the thing
is, where it actually is, and whether that is still true. An entity page that describes a
system correctly but names no host, path, version or status has not earned its keep.

Inherits [kb/CONTRACT.md](../CONTRACT.md) for the rules the stack enforces - linking mechanics,
provenance, citation, the confidence machinery - and
[kb/CONVENTIONS.md](../CONVENTIONS.md) for what this instance decided: language, naming forms,
tone, relationship labels, the confidence rubric. Neither is restated here.

<!-- wikitool:toc -->
## Contents

- [Types offered](#types-offered)
- [Per-area emphasis](#per-area-emphasis)
- [People live on their organization's page until they earn their own](#people-live-on-their-organizations-page-until-they-earn-their-own)
- [Authorised labels](#authorised-labels)
- [Outbound linking](#outbound-linking)
- [What does not belong here](#what-does-not-belong-here)
<!-- /wikitool:toc -->

## Types offered

`entity` (`tools/wikitool types describe entity`). The `entity_type:` field selects the area:

| Area | Holds |
|------|-------|
| `codebases/` | Codebases, named after their repository or common name |
| `systems/` | Deployed and running systems, given a descriptive name |
| `tools/` | CLI and desktop tools, named as the tool names itself |
| `technologies/` | Protocols, languages, formats, in their standard spelling and capitalization |
| `people/` | People, by full name or common handle |
| `organizations/` | Companies, public bodies, associations and their departments, by the name they use themselves |

These are areas, not collections: they inherit this contract and carry no `COLLECTION.md`.

## Per-area emphasis

- **Codebases** - purpose, status, language/stack, owner, repository, dependencies on other
  codebases and systems, architectural decisions.
- **Systems** - purpose, components, dependencies, configuration locations, deployment,
  operational status, monitoring.
- **Technologies** - purpose, use cases, trade-offs, version compatibility, which projects and
  systems use it.
- **Tools** - purpose, installation, usage, notable options, which projects use it.
- **People** - role, affiliation, and the projects or decisions they are connected to. Nothing
  personal beyond what the source states.
- **Organizations** - what kind of body it is, what it stands to this wiki as (client, supplier,
  vendor), and the people in it - see below.

## People live on their organization's page until they earn their own

A person whose source material is a name, a role and a field of work does not get a page: that
page would restate its own title, which is worse than the mention it came from (`wiki-ingest`
step 7). They get a `###` section under the `## Personen` heading of their organization's page
instead - role, field of work, one to three lines. The organization page is then the grouping a
directory level cannot be, and it sits inside the size a page should have rather than a dozen
stubs below it.

A person **is promoted** to a page of their own once a source carries material for one. Their
section shrinks to one line with a `[[wikilink]]`, their page carries `member-of` to the
organization, and every edge and anchor link that meant them moves to the new page. The steps are
[instructions/page-lifecycle.md](../../instructions/page-lifecycle.md) § "Promote a section to its
own page"; `wikitool lint` reports an anchor link left pointing at the vanished section as
`broken_anchors`.

Until then, a person is reached through their organization: a project page's edge points at the
organization (`consults: Kunde X`), and the prose names the person as `[[Kunde X#Anna Müller]]`.
An organization that outgrows its page - by `Split Threshold`, roughly 120-150 lines - splits off
a department or site as an organization page of its own, linked `part-of` the parent.

## Authorised labels

The `outbound:` block above is what `wikitool lint` and `xref add` check: which labels a page in
this collection may use, per destination. The catalogue they are drawn from - and what each one
asserts - is [instructions/link-taxonomy.md](../../instructions/link-taxonomy.md), which binds
nothing on its own.

Operational labels dominate here because an entity's relationships are mostly to other concrete things. `implements` points *out* to a concept; the concept does not point back unless that direction is a statement of its own.

Three of these carry a caveat this area produces more often than the others. `authored` belongs
on a person page pointing at what they made, and it is the label a dead or departed creator
takes - `owns` claims someone answers for the thing *now*. `alternative-to` is self-dual and is
written **once per pair**, never from both ends: a set of interchangeable tools is where a
mirrored clique grows fastest. `derived-from` and `adapted-from` are here for the fork and the
re-implementation - one tool worked up out of another - which is a lineage claim the operational
labels cannot make.

`involves` and `owned-by` are the participation labels, and they run the other way from
`authored`/`owns`/`maintains`: written on the codebase or system, pointing at the person or
organization - `[Codebase] involves [Person]`. `involves` is the contributor who neither answers
for the thing nor keeps it running; take `maintains` or `owns` from the person's side when one of
those is true instead. `owned-by` is `owns` read from the thing's side - write whichever page a
reader would ask the question on, not both by reflex.

`member-of` runs from a person page to the organization they belong to, and only from a person
who has been promoted to a page (see above) - everyone else is a section on that organization's
page already. It is not `part-of`: a department is a component of its company, a person is not,
and `part-of` stays for the department or site split off an organization that outgrew its page.

Adding a label here is a deliberate contract change, not a way around a refusal.

## Outbound linking

An entity links to the technologies it uses, the systems it runs on, the projects that depend
on it, and the concepts it implements.

An entity that mentions a concept without linking it is incomplete; the concept page is where
the *why* lives, and the entity page should not restate it.

## What does not belong here

- A pattern, protocol, architecture or decision - those are concepts, even when only one entity
  uses them.
- A page about a source document - that is a `source` page in `kb/sources/`.
- Singular naming is required: `HA Integration.md`, not `HA Integrations.md`.