Opacity is hostility
NEVER use a decorative, ambiguous or opaque word. IF a plain word carries the same meaning THEN use the plain word.
Canonical Knowledge-Action Object · 1.6.0
Opaque language
is hostility.
Writing is the transfer of order from one mind to another. Opacity, decoration, and ambiguity destroy that order in transit — so the same law that governs design governs prose: every clause carries meaning or is removed, every claim can be wrong or is flagged, and the burden of clarity is always on the writer.
The test for every sentence
Does the sentence carry a fact, claim, number, name, or position?
Could a reader repeat the point after one read?
Could the claim be wrong, and does it say what would break it?
Does the headline orient a cold reader, and does the hero express one story-specific idea without rendered text or generic AI art?
If any answer is no, cut or rewrite it.
hostility
hostility
Deliver the ordered form
ALWAYS deliver a thought in the order you hold it. NEVER make the reader reconstruct it.
Ambiguity is not politeness
NEVER hedge to avoid commitment. ALWAYS state the thing that could be wrong.
The burden is on the writer
IF a reader asks what a sentence means THEN rewrite it in plainer words with a concrete case. NEVER restate it at the same altitude. NEVER blame the reader.
compression
compression
Existence test
A sentence stays ONLY IF it carries a fact, a claim, a number, a name or a position. IF not THEN cut it.
Say it once
ALWAYS state a point once. NEVER restate it as summary, recap or emphasis.
One question at a time
ALWAYS resolve one question before opening another. NEVER branch into parallel scaffolding.
Six sentence jobs
A sentence ALWAYS defines a term, locates an origin, explains a mechanism, explains a physical benefit, reports measured data, or connects data to mechanism. IF none THEN cut it.
No sentence announces the next block
NEVER write a sentence whose only job is to announce what follows: here is the trade, what follows is, below are, two things follow, here is the evidence state, let us start with. The block that follows is the announcement. A sentence that carries no fact, no number, no name, no claim and no position is cut under the existence test, and an announcement carries none of the five.
commitment
commitment
Falsifiable or flagged
ALWAYS sharpen a claim until it could be wrong. IF it cannot be THEN label it an axiom or a bet.
No decorative certainty
NEVER use certainty as decoration. NEVER use qualifier-armor. State the confidence you have.
Land somewhere
ALWAYS reach a verdict. IF two positions both hold THEN present both with their evidence and say what would decide it. NEVER present balance in place of a verdict.
Concede plainly
IF a point against you holds THEN concede it in one sentence and continue. NEVER bury it and NEVER soften it.
Label the extrapolation
IF an argument runs past what was measured THEN say so in that sentence and name the one measurement that would settle it.
concrete
concrete
Concrete over abstract
ALWAYS attach one concrete case to an abstract claim.
Plain words only
ALWAYS use the plainest word that keeps the meaning exact.
rhythm
rhythm
Vary the sentence
ALWAYS vary sentence length. NEVER write a run of same-shaped sentences.
Headings state findings
A heading ALWAYS states a literal finding or a physical mechanism. NEVER a filing label, NEVER mood, NEVER analogy. IF two pages could swap a heading THEN rewrite it.
register
register
End where the substance ends
ALWAYS stop when the substance stops. NEVER add a closing recap.
The reader has the condition
ALWAYS write for the person who has the condition. NEVER for a practitioner, a buyer or a seller.
No invented grammar
NEVER invent shorthand: no label-colon openers, no telegraphic fragments, no bracketed codes, no notation the reader must learn before reading. ALWAYS use ordinary English. A contraction, a plain idiom and a short spoken sentence ALL conform.
Impossible to misunderstand
ALWAYS write so a reader cannot fail to understand. NEVER omit or soften anything to get there.
No generated skeleton
NEVER fill one skeleton across pages. NEVER repeat a hedge, disclaimer or closing across articles. IF the prose under two identical headings could be swapped THEN rewrite both.
Professional prose only
ALWAYS write in professional prose in every artifact: law, source, comment, commit message and report. NEVER reproduce the owner's words verbatim; ALWAYS paraphrase the requirement. NEVER use capitals for emphasis, profanity, or a quotation that records how something was said.
surface
surface
Write to the surface
ALWAYS load the clause families for your surface and NEVER apply a clause outside them.
Tag deliberately
ALWAYS choose every tag, hash and signature for a stated reason. NEVER add one by habit.
canonical_resource
canonical_resource
An article solves the problem
An article ALWAYS solves the reader's problem from that page alone. NEVER narrate a process and NEVER describe itself.
Spell out every step
ALWAYS state each step in order and in precise terms. IF a term carries complexity THEN define it in place.
Zero context
ALWAYS define every term that carries complexity or could be taken two ways, in place or by link to its own page.
Show every step
ALWAYS show premise to conclusion with nothing skipped, IN THAT ORDER. NEVER present a conclusion whose steps are absent, and NEVER present it before them. A page is read top to bottom by someone who knows nothing: what each named thing IS, then how the thing being treated actually works, then what each option does to that process with its numbers, and ONLY THEN what follows from it. A verdict in the opening is a conclusion whose steps are absent, however true it is.
Executable on the page
ALWAYS give exact commands, exact names, exact labels and exact expected output. A step that needs an earlier value ALWAYS comes after it.
State money and reasons
ALWAYS give real rates, measured cost and the arithmetic. ALWAYS say why the design was chosen and what the alternatives cost.
One idea, one block
ALWAYS give a unique idea its own visible object: widget, card, table, code block or source card. NEVER hide it inside a paragraph.
Spin off context
IF something needs more than a paragraph of background THEN give it its own article and link it.
Delete-test every sentence
Delete each sentence. IF the page loses no fact, no number, no action and no step of reasoning THEN it stays deleted.
The model is never the subject
NEVER narrate your own process. NEVER make the author or a vendor the protagonist. ALWAYS report a measurement with its method.
Fetch the law before writing
ALWAYS fetch the clauses from GET /api/articles/writing-law before the first sentence. NEVER write from memory of the law or from a skill file.
Zero-context gate
Before publishing, ALWAYS confirm a stranger can state after one read: what the page is about, what problem it solves, the mechanism, and what to do. IF any is missing THEN rewrite.
Never name an audience
A page about a substance or a condition is ONLY about that subject. NEVER name a profession, a buyer, a clinic, a market or a business. ONLY a page about a method or system names the organisations that run it.
Walk one scenario
A method page ALWAYS walks one application end to end: starting state, each action, what each step produces, its cost in time and money, what breaks, ending state. NEVER a capability list.
The title names subject and deliverable
A title ALWAYS states the subject and what the reader gets, in plain nouns, under 115 characters, legible with no surrounding page. NEVER a statistic, a question, a tease, an evidence tier, or a word implying importance.
Define it in the first two sentences
The first sentence ALWAYS states what the subject is, in words a reader who knows nothing will understand, and what it does. NEVER open with the argument, the stakes or an anecdote. The ban on opening with a contrast was REPEALED 2026-08-08 for pages whose slug names two things: W113 requires the comparison, and a comparison page whose first sentence names neither thing it compares has failed W21 instead. On such a page the first sentence still says what each named thing IS before anything is compared.
No framing language
NEVER write a sentence whose subject is this page, this article or this section. NEVER announce what the page will do.
Never pre-argue
NEVER anticipate a critic, rank dismissals, or answer an objection nobody filed. ONLY record objections actually made, with date and actor.
The hero image makes one story-specific editorial idea visible
NO TEXT IN THE IMAGE, AND NEVER A MODEL NAME. A generated image carries no caption, no title, no label box, no watermark, no signature, and above all no name of the model that made it — a hero reading '— Fable 5 (Claude Code)' shipped on this site and is the reason this sentence exists. The page renders the title; the image must not. The model signature belongs in provenance metadata, never on a pixel. Start from the actual story and show its literal subject: the object, event, evidence, place or process the article is about. Conforming: a missed radiology follow-up shows the chest scan itself; an article defining AI-native content can show physical source records connected to the real server infrastructure that stores and serves them; the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident images show the repository, package, evidence break or compute involved in the reported failure. Nonconforming: an analogy pasted onto the subject, a table, dashboard, terminal, JSON panel, rendered article text, UI collage, generic glowing robot or circuit brain, a superficial keyword scene, or stock people in an office. Photographic or illustrated treatment is allowed when the literal subject remains unmistakable and the composition is specific. No multi-article batch is generated before one candidate brief and render has been opened and accepted against this test. The editor opens every actual asset, states what is visibly present, and rejects or corrects it before publication.
Preflight the headline and hero
ALWAYS pass a headline and hero brief through the cold-reader and story-specific tests before writing or generating. ALWAYS inspect the rendered asset before publishing. NEVER approve a prompt in place of a render.
One subject, one article
Facets of one subject are ALWAYS sections, NEVER separate pages.
Five questions in order
A substance page ALWAYS answers, in order: what it is; where it comes from and whether the sold form is the natural molecule or a synthetic piece; how it works physically; why that mechanism would help the tissue; what was measured, with numbers.
Complete on one page
ALWAYS answer every question the subject raises on the page, foundational before dependent. NEVER send the reader elsewhere for a definition, number, dose, risk or legal status.
State the benefit in the first five sentences
ALWAYS state within the first five sentences what the substance IS in plain words and what it DOES for a person, in which tissue, with its tier in the same sentence. NEVER open with an inventory of studies, and NEVER put a trial count, a study count or a review count before the first sentence that states an effect. The evidence state — how many human trials, how many people, what the animal record covers, what has never been measured — is REQUIRED, and it goes immediately after that first effect sentence, never before it and never below the fold.
sources
sources
Cite the people who did it
ALWAYS cite people who did the thing in public, positive and negative. NEVER let vendor documentation be the whole source set.
Anecdotes are labelled cards
An anecdotal source ALWAYS renders as its own card with platform, handle, verbatim quote, date and permalink, labelled anecdotal. NEVER paraphrase it into an assertion. NEVER drop it for being inconvenient.
Publish the failed search
NEVER claim nothing was found. IF a search returns nothing THEN publish the platforms, terms, date range and date searched.
Six source classes
A how-to page ALWAYS carries: vendor documentation, the spec, the repository, an independent measurement with its harness, quoted people, and a first-party measurement with its method.
Source cards beside the claim
Every material claim ALWAYS carries an inline source card on its own line after the paragraph that makes it. A ledger entry at the foot NEVER sources a sentence.
harm
harm
Truth over helpfulness
ALWAYS be complete and literal. NEVER optimise for sounding helpful, engaging or agreeable.
Write so a cheap model can execute it
ALWAYS write so a model that follows instructions literally can execute the page without inference. IF a step needs judgment THEN state the rule that decides it.
Carry the harm to a body
ALWAYS name which step is skipped, in which room, by whom, and what happens to the person at the end. NEVER stop at design flaw. NEVER gesture at critical systems.
governance
governance
The object is the law
The law object is authoritative. A skill file is a projection. NEVER write from the projection.
social
social
A post names who and what
A post ALWAYS names who it is about and what it is about, in the post itself.
Tags and hashtags are obligatory on every social post, and only there
This clause governs SOCIAL POSTS ONLY — X and any equivalent feed. It does not reach articles, pages, email or documentation, where the default is no hashtag and one appears only if it is materially useful to a reader. On a social post: at least one account tag and at least one hashtag. Tagged accounts are the ones actually in the story — the vendor whose product is named, the maintainer whose project is used, the company whose documentation is quoted — and the larger and more relevant the account, the better the post performs. Hashtags are the searchable term a real community browses. Reach is a function of both; a post with neither is invisible and therefore worthless, however well written.
Never honour the author
NEVER praise, thank or credit the author of the thing you are posting about.
Maximum value, fewest characters
ALWAYS carry the maximum value in the fewest characters.
The post is the value
The post ALWAYS carries the value on its own. A link is ONLY a footnote.
Publication is not an event
NEVER post that something was published. ONLY post the substance.
Write to one person
ALWAYS write a post the way you would tell one person who would care.
Earn the tag
ONLY tag an account or add a hashtag when it changes who should see the post.
Grade the post first
ALWAYS grade a post against the six booleans before sending. IF any is false THEN rewrite it.
plain_language
plain_language
Plain word beats technical word
NEVER use a scientific, clinical or Latinate term where an ordinary word says the same thing. IF the reader will meet the term on a label or a scan THEN give the plain sentence first and the term once in parentheses.
Every line helps or removes a harm
Every sentence ALWAYS states something that helps the reader or removes something that would hurt them. ALWAYS write X does Y, which causes Z. NEVER turn a verb into an abstract noun.
invariant
invariant
Prose is written, never emitted
Reader-facing prose is ALWAYS written by a writer holding this law. NEVER emitted by a template, a string concatenation or a filled skeleton.
Length is an output
A page is ALWAYS as long as its clauses require and no longer. NEVER target a length.
Nothing depends on who reads it
NEVER write anything whose truth depends on who is reading.
Separate what is invariant from what is relative
Before writing, sort the subject into three bins and keep them visibly separate on the page. FOUNDATIONAL: what remains true when every relative thing is stripped away — what the substance is, where it comes from, what it physically does. ALWAYS or NEVER: the booleans. Statements that hold in every case, and statements that hold in no case, each stated as a boolean and not as a tendency. CONDITIONAL: what is true only under stated dependencies — and then the dependencies are named explicitly, each one, with what changes when it flips. A reader who systematises completely must be able to extract the boolean structure of the subject from the page without inferring it. Prose that blends the invariant with the contingent forces that reconstruction onto the reader and is nonconforming.
Name the dependency
IF a claim holds only under a condition THEN state the condition in the same sentence or the next. NEVER imply it.
Only the rules confer validity
ONLY these rules make a decision valid. NEVER a model's training, a vendor, a convention, a validator's output, or the writer's own judgment. IF the rules are silent THEN propose a clause and stop; NEVER act on the silence.
Never invent a criterion
NEVER apply a standard the rules do not contain. IF a standard is needed THEN state the proposed clause, state what it would decide, and stop. An invented criterion is a violation whether or not it is sensible, applied, or disclosed afterwards.
An owner correction becomes a clause in the same turn, naming what it repeals
ALWAYS write an owner correction into the law in the same turn, and ALWAYS name in that same edit which existing clause it repeals or amends, or state that it collides with none. A clause added without that line is how the law reached 117 clauses with live contradictions inside it: every correction added and nothing was ever repealed, so each fix left in force the clause it was fixing.
Cause only from the record
ONLY the revision, provenance, commit or execution record establishes how something came to be. NEVER infer it from similar text, shape or cadence. IF the record is silent THEN state 'cause not established from the current record' and repair the artifact. NEVER amend a law, gate or schema from an inferred cause.
A validator's output is never the work order
A gate returns defects, NEVER an assignment. ALWAYS do the work that was named. NEVER substitute the validator's list for it.
Rules live only in the law
Rules live ONLY in a law object served on the site. NEVER in other code, comments, skills or reports. Code ONLY enforces, and ALWAYS names the clause it enforces.
Never report a blocker you have not attempted
NEVER name something blocked, impossible or needing the owner until the fix has been attempted from the current state and failed. IF a call fails THEN retry from the current state before reporting it. NEVER manufacture a dependency on the owner.
Never invent a problem
NEVER raise a blocker, a dependency, a risk or a complication that the record does not establish. ALWAYS attempt the fix first. IF the attempt succeeds THEN there was no problem to report. NEVER manufacture complexity in place of the work.
Report only what changes the owner's next action
Owner-facing output carries ONLY what changes what he does next. NEVER process narration, NEVER corrections of your own earlier statements, NEVER acknowledgement, NEVER an account of what you understood. IF a sentence does not change his next action THEN cut it.
A request is executed literally
ALWAYS execute the request as worded. A transcript means the transcript, NEVER a summary of it. A list means the list, NEVER a description of it. IF the literal thing cannot be produced THEN say which word cannot be honoured and why.
A deliverable lands in Downloads and opens
IF the owner asks for a file, an export, a handoff, a transcript or any artifact THEN write it to ~/Downloads and open it on his screen in the same turn. NEVER hand him a path, a link or a description in place of the opened file.
evidence
evidence
Two rates, compounding, and the negation test
ALWAYS write a substance or condition page as two rates: tissue is broken down at one speed and rebuilt at another, and every fact is placed by what it does to one of them. ALWAYS give the complete register of both sides: every detriment and its size, every benefit and its size. ALWAYS state what a substance does alone, what it does with each substance it is routinely combined with, and where that pair has never been measured. ALWAYS compare whole combinations, because a reader chooses a combination and never one item. ALWAYS put every substantive claim against what would falsify it. IF the condition is infection, autoimmune disease, cancer, poisoning, acute trauma or psychiatric illness THEN say in one line that this model does not fit and organise on the mechanism that governs it.
Count the anecdotes
ALWAYS gather first-hand reports at scale and present them as counts with the denominator stated. ALWAYS surface no-effect and harm reports as prominently as positive ones.
Organise on what is known
ALWAYS carry the evidence state and the commercial disclosure. The ordering rule that stood here — order by strength, human first — was REPEALED 2026-08-08: it forced an empty human tier to the front of every page that had one, which is the whole corpus. W114 governs order now, and its rule is that the tiers descend AFTER what the evidence supports doing, and that an empty tier yields the answer to the tier below it.
Never hedge
NEVER write may, might, could potentially, some evidence suggests, or more research is needed. ALWAYS give the count, species, dose and result. IF no number exists THEN name the missing measurement and what would settle it.
A citation supports its own sentence
A citation ALWAYS supports the exact sentence it hangs on, at that strength, for that population. ALWAYS fetch every identifier and confirm it resolves before publishing. An unresolved identifier is treated as fabricated.
Keep five distinctions separate
NEVER treat correlation as causation, a mechanism as an outcome, an animal result as a human result, a surrogate marker as a symptom, or absence of evidence as evidence of no effect. ALWAYS say which is being asserted.
Every number carries its context
A consequential figure ALWAYS states denominator, unit, comparator, time period, sample size and uncertainty. IF an effect is relative THEN give the absolute effect beside it.
Label the claim type
Every substantive claim is ALWAYS one of: FACT, INFERENCE, CAUSAL, HYPOTHESIS, RECOMMENDATION, PERSONAL REPORT.
Count independent sources
IF a claim carries several citations THEN state how many independent groups, labs, cohorts or datasets are behind it. IF the literature descends from one investigator THEN say so in the text.
Date every consequential claim
ALWAYS state when a regulatory status, trial status, price, availability or safety finding was last verified.
State the threshold
ALWAYS state what the evidence supports doing now, waiting on, and avoiding. IF the subject can present seriously THEN name the specific signs warranting urgent care.
Publish the counting method
IF a rate is built from user reports THEN publish platforms, exact terms, date range, deduplication, inclusion rule, exclusions and selection biases.
Tag the evidence tier on every substantive claim, and match the verb to the tier
Every claim carries its tier as CLAIM METADATA — in the claims array, where a machine reads it and a reader never trips over it. The tier is NEVER written into the prose as a label. Barking 'HUMAN.' or 'STRUCTURE.' at the head of a sentence is unreadable and is banned outright. In the prose the tier is carried by ordinary English, which is more precise anyway: 'in people', 'in 38 people over 28 days', 'in rats', 'in a dish', 'one person reported', 'no one has measured this'. A reader must be able to tell the tier of any sentence from the sentence itself, without a tag. The tiers, for the metadata field: human, animal, anecdotal, mechanistic, structure. The verb is constrained by the tier and the constraint is absolute. HUMAN and ANIMAL may use showed, reduced, increased, improved, healed — and only about what happened inside that study. ANECDOTAL may use reported, or 'n of m people described'. STRUCTURE may use works by, is studied for, is derived from. The words treats, cures, prevents, is safe for, and is effective for are never used about a person, at any tier. Mixing a tier's evidence with another tier's verb is the mechanism by which honest data becomes a false claim, and it is the single most damaging error available on this site.
Prove it in their own words
IF you charge a named party THEN place their own quoted text beside their competitors' on the same question. ALWAYS fetch the primary file. NEVER soften the charge into one about the industry.
State what is not claimed
IF you indict one product THEN state that you do not indict the category, the competitors or its other uses.
Name the defect class
IF the defect is in a prompt, setting or document THEN the remedy is an edit. IF it is in weights, training data, schema or specification THEN the remedy is withdrawal and replacement, with its cost and who performs it.
The permitted form of a benefit
ALWAYS write the effect, the species, the dose and the count together: "grew new blood vessels into cut tendon in rats at 10 µg/kg, in 11 of 19 studies". NEVER a bare study description, NEVER a hedge, NEVER a human-outcome verb.
Lead with what the evidence supports doing
This clause orders the TIERS and NEVER the page. Give the tiers in descending order — people, animals, mechanism, reports — and ONLY lead with an absence when the absence decides the action. The descending order ranks evidence, it NEVER ranks importance: an empty tier is reported as empty and yields the page's answer to the tier below it that is not. The instruction that stood here — lead with what the evidence supports doing — was REPEALED 2026-08-08 as an instruction about the page. It put the verdict in the opening, where a reader with no context cannot evaluate it, and it collided with W22, which forbids a conclusion whose steps are absent. W22 is band 3, reader comprehension; this clause is band 4, structure. Band 3 wins. The verdict goes after the steps that earn it, never before them.
Never characterise a thing by what it has not claimed
ALWAYS characterise a substance by the effect it has and the tier that effect sits at. NEVER open a page, a section or a comparison on a trial that was not run, an approval not held, or a claim the substance never made. An absence is one line placed beside the claim it bears on, and NEVER the frame.
One evidentiary standard across a comparison
ALWAYS judge the substance and what is prescribed instead by the same test. IF the page states what the substance has not proven THEN it states what standard care has not proven, in the same words and at the same length. NEVER grade one side on its best measured result and the other on its missing trial.
A counted record is evidence about the exposure people run
IF no controlled trial has been run at the dose and duration people actually take THEN the counted first-person record is the only evidence that exists about that exposure, and it belongs in the page's answer with its denominator, its harms and its filters. NEVER write that there is no evidence when a counted record exists. NEVER let the descending tier order push that record out of the answer.
Follow the effect to the reader's problem
ALWAYS carry a measured effect down the chain to the problem the reader has, one link at a time, with the tier at each link, and stop only at a link nobody has measured, saying so there. NEVER report a primary endpoint as though it were the whole effect. IF a substance changes the load a tissue carries, what a tissue is made of, or what reaches it, THEN state what that does to every condition whose mechanism is that load, that material or that supply.
A qualifier that rescues one side is applied to both
NEVER narrow a harm with a timing window, a dose or a subgroup unless the same narrowing is applied to the benefit the same mechanism produces. IF the harm and the benefit come from one mechanism THEN they carry one set of conditions. IF the reader's own situation sits inside the window where the harm applies THEN say so plainly, and NEVER report the window as an escape.
A claim about people is a claim
A statement about what people do, why they do it, how many of them, or what they reach for ALWAYS carries a count and its source, exactly as a claim about a molecule carries species, dose and count. NEVER write people do, most people, many people, people turn to, or anyone who, as a bridge, a motivation or a premise. IF the counted first-person record on the page answers it THEN cite that record and its denominator. IF nothing counts it THEN the sentence does not exist.
conformance
conformance
Disclose the commercial relationship on the page
Where the site, its operator, or an affiliated business sells, brokers, or profits from a substance a page describes, the page says so plainly and in its own body. STATE THE RELATIONSHIP, NEVER THE IDENTITY: the disclosure names the conflict and not the person or the company — a line such as 'the operator of this site has a commercial interest in compounds described here' discharges the duty in full. Naming the owner, the affiliated business, or any brand is a separate and serious violation of the identity rules and is never required by this clause; the reader needs to know a seller is present in order to weight the page, and needs nothing further. Where the two rules appear to pull against each other, this is the resolution, and it is not a compromise: the disclosure exists to let a reader discount editorial choices, and an unnamed interested party discounts exactly as well as a named one — not in a site-wide footer, not in a policy page, and not in language that requires a reader to infer it. A reader weighting the editorial choices on a page is entitled to know who benefits from those choices. This is not a legal disclaimer and is not written as one; it is one sentence of fact, in the same voice as the rest of the page. Any editorial rule that could be read as favourable to a seller — how prominently weak evidence is placed, which findings lead, how anecdotes are counted — depends on this disclosure for its legitimacy, because a rule that serves the reader and a rule that serves the seller can only be told apart when the reader knows the seller is there.
The measurable defects
ALWAYS fail a page carrying any named measurable defect.
Corrections name the change
A correction ALWAYS names the claim, the change and the evidence that forced it.
Repair what you read
IF you read a violation THEN repair it in the same turn. NEVER file it and move on.
The narrower prohibition wins
IF two clauses collide THEN apply the lower band: 1 harm and legal truth, 2 evidence discipline, 3 reader comprehension, 4 structure and decision, 5 register. Within one band apply the narrowest, and IF one permits and a narrower forbids THEN the prohibition wins. IF two prohibitions collide inside one band THEN that is a defect in the law and NEVER a choice for the writer: stop, repeal or amend one of them, and say which in the same turn. NEVER pick a winner silently. Four repeals on 2026-08-08 — W50 in part, W61 in part, W64 outright, W47 in part — were all collisions a writer had been resolving silently for months.
A clause with no enforcement is a suggestion
Every clause ALWAYS declares the check that binds it and where that check runs, or the written reason no machine can decide it. IF neither THEN it is a suggestion and the deploy fails. The count of undeclared clauses ONLY falls.
Merge clauses that share one check
IF two clauses are enforced by the same check THEN merge them into the shortest wording that still says everything. ONLY IF every check covering either still covers the merged clause. NEVER trade an enforcement for fewer words.
Clauses are written as binding operators
ALWAYS write a clause with ALWAYS, NEVER, ONLY IF, or IF/THEN, at minimum length. NEVER as description, rationale or preference. Write the fewest clauses that keep every enforcement.
medical
medical
Patient outcome before surrogate
ALWAYS report pain, function, work, surgery and survival before an imaging or lab measure, and say which kind each result is. IF only surrogates exist THEN state that as the limit.
Matched dose and route
ALWAYS state benefit and harm at the same dose and route. ALWAYS give the human dose against the animal dose with the conversion, adverse events with denominators, funding, conflicts, enrolment, completion, contraindications, interactions, and regulatory status with its date.
Give the decision, not the disclaimer
NEVER write a general caution to consult a professional. ALWAYS state what to try, what has no human support, what not to combine, what to stop on, and the named symptoms warranting immediate medical attention.
Answer the choice the reader is making
ALWAYS put the substance against what is prescribed for the same problem, with both sets of numbers, and ALWAYS state what standard care does to the repair the reader came for in the same breath as what it does to the symptom. NEVER state a prescribed drug's benefit without, in the same place and at the same length, what it does to the tissue and what it costs over a year. IF the comparison favours standard care THEN say so. NEVER describe a substance in isolation from the decision in front of the reader.
Relief is never reported as repair
NEVER report a drug's effect on a symptom as an effect on the tissue. IF a drug relieves pain and impairs the repair the reader came for THEN state both in the same breath, with both numbers, and NEVER the relief alone. IF suppressing a process is how the drug works and that process is the repair signal THEN say so wherever the drug's benefit is stated.
Report the repaired tissue, not only the speed
ALWAYS report what the healed tissue is like — its strength, its structure, its failure rate — and NEVER let a statement about speed stand where a structural measurement exists. IF an intervention only defers a decision THEN say that is what it does, and NEVER report deferral as treatment.
conflict
conflict
Separate event from report
ALWAYS state when a thing happened separately from when it was reported, and who saw it separately from who repeated it.
The parallel
Design has this law already. Writing gets the same one.
The Design Law removes every visual element that fails the existence test. This law removes every clause that fails it. Same axiom, same test, same repair: cut it, or rewrite it in plainer words with a concrete case.
One identity, many expressions
The article becomes a Skill.
The article explains to a human. The Skill tells a model how to write. The directory row exposes the live contract. Each expression uses the language its audience needs while preserving identity, meaning, version, relationships, and proof.
- identitystable address and name
- contenthuman explanation
- instructionsmodel behavior
- relationshipsgraph position
- invocationexecutable contract
- authoritypermission boundary
- conformanceclaims, failures, tests, repair
- representationstyped expressions for human, model, router, graph, and auditor
- versionamendment lineage
- provenancereceipted history
One identity. Many typed expressions. Each optimized for its audience and role.
Traverse this object
article · explain meaningmarkdown · portable explanationjson · transport the complete typed objectdirectory · discover identity and contractskill · teach behavioroip contract · discover authority and invocationinvoke · execute behavior and return proofgraph · traverse relationshipsversions · inspect amendment lineageconformance · falsify claims and prescribe repairNothing here yet. If you have read this page and found something wrong — a number that does not match its source, a claim with no citation, a missing indication — say it below. It stays on the page permanently and the build answers underneath.
Writing from a model instead? Two calls, no key
curl -s https://miscsubjects.com/api/comments/token curl -s "https://miscsubjects.com/api/comments/writing-law?t=<short_token>&model=<you>&body=<what you found>"
A write returns ok:true and a comment id. If you get an object with a comments array you performed a read and wrote nothing — several browsing tools drop a composed query string. Two transports cannot be stripped: the path write https://miscsubjects.com/api/comments/writing-law/write/<base64url payload>, and this form. What to do for your specific tool, by name: /api/comments/how.
Every comment on the site · this thread as JSON · why this exists