---
# wikitool:template-unfilled - delete this line once the file is answered.
language: en
profile: none
sections:
  relationships: Relationships
  see_also: See Also
  footnotes: Footnotes
# Headings this instance no longer writes but still recognizes, so a corpus can
# be translated page by page instead of all at once. Optional; the names this
# stack wrote before this file existed are always recognized anyway.
# section_aliases:
#   relationships: [Beziehungen]
#   see_also: [Siehe auch]
#   footnotes: [Fußnoten]
---

# kb/ - Authoring Conventions of This Instance

The decisions [kb/CONTRACT.md](CONTRACT.md) deliberately does not make. The contract holds what
the code enforces and is identical in every instance; this file holds what *this* instance
chooses, and no other instance has to agree with a word of it.

**It binds all the same.** Everything below applies to every page under `kb/`, exactly as the
contract does. The difference is ownership, not authority: a rule here is changed by editing
this file, a rule there by changing the stack.

Ready-made answers to every section below - including a complete German profile - are in
[instructions/kb-profiles.md](../instructions/kb-profiles.md). That catalogue is a palette, not
an enum: adopt an entry, adapt it, or write your own. What is written *here* is what holds.

The frontmatter above is the one machine-read part. `sections:` names the three headings
`wikitool xref` and `wikitool cite` write into. Set them before the first page is written:
afterwards, changing one is a corpus migration rather than an edit.

## Language

Pages are written in **{language}**. This binds `kb/` and the authoring surface that shapes it -
the page type-specs `types/entity.md`, `types/concept.md`, `types/source.md` and
`types/comparison.md`, whose `## Template` blocks are the body skeleton every new page starts
from. `raw/` is untouched ([raw/CONTRACT.md](../raw/CONTRACT.md)), and the control plane stays
English: `AGENTS.md`, the stage contracts, this file, `instructions/`, and the type-specs for
non-page artifacts.

Which line is prose and which is an identifier - and therefore what is translated at all - is
the contract's rule, not this file's: see
[kb/CONTRACT.md § Language and identifiers](CONTRACT.md#language-and-identifiers).

{Which established foreign-language technical terms stay untranslated inside this instance's
prose, and where the vocabulary for that is looked up. Delete this paragraph if the KB language
is the one those terms are already in.}

### Section headings

The canonical names are the frontmatter's. Any name this instance previously wrote stays
recognized through `section_aliases:`, which is what lets a corpus be translated page by page.
Renaming such a heading is the translation pass's job, never a side effect of another command.
Any *other* heading an author adds is ordinary prose.

## Naming

- {Title form - words and spaces, or kebab-case, or the subject's own spelling.}
- {Singular or plural for entities.}
- {How a comparison page's title reads.}
- {The ADR prefix, if this instance files decisions as pages.}
- {What to name a thing: projects, systems, tools, technologies, people.}

The one naming fact that is *not* a choice, and therefore lives in the contract: the filename
stem is the page title, and `[[wikilinks]]` must match it exactly.

## Tone

{The register pages are written in, in one line.}

- {Words and constructions this instance refuses, with examples in the KB language.}

Good: {one sentence that is what this instance wants.}

Bad: {the same sentence written the way it must not be.}

## Relationship labels

`tools/wikitool xref add --rel-a/--rel-b` takes a free-text label. Listing the ones this
instance uses is what keeps a graph typed rather than a wiki full of "related to":

{the label vocabulary, in the KB language}

No code matches on these, so an old label on an untranslated page is stale wording, not a
broken reference.

## Confidence rubric

`confidence_base` is set by hand and `confidence` is derived from it - that mechanism is the
contract's. What the number *means* is this instance's:

{the base score, what raises it, and by how much}

{How to hedge in prose at a low score, in the KB language.}

## Keeping this file honest

Change it when a convention actually changes, and treat a change to `sections:` as a corpus
migration rather than an edit. `wikitool doctor` FAILs on a missing or unfilled file, and
`wikitool docs verify` refuses a `sections:` block that does not name all three slots.