Glossary¶
Look up terms as they arise in your reading. To try the protocol, follow Your first draft; to implement it, consult the requirements in the specification.
Names and spaces¶
Legible¶
The short form of Legible Protocol, used to refer to the protocol.
Legible Protocol¶
The project and website name, at legibleprotocol.com, which publishes the specification, articles, books and reference code. Participants create their spaces in their own environments. LegibleProtocol is also the proposed GitHub organization name.
The Legible Protocol¶
The specification's full name. Its edition identifies the formats and contracts an implementation follows. Draft 0.4 is the specification edition presented here; site and software versions are identified separately.
Legible space¶
A space where participants can find, understand and develop one another's contributions using records and their own tools. It may begin in a shared folder or span projects and organizations. “Legibility space” describes this condition of reading and collaboration.
Open Legibility¶
The book's title and the practice it develops: making contributions and relationships legible so possibilities for work and cooperation can form before selection. The paper The Economics of Legibility presents the economic argument.
Operating in Open Legibility means sustaining that path with participants, tools and reading practices. It can take place in public, internal or combined spaces. “Open” does not require publication: contribution can precede selection within applicable access conditions. See the circuit.
Participation and records¶
Personal and cognitive provenance¶
An account of who formulated something, the criteria and choices they took responsibility for and the work they drew on. Provenance lets readers examine that participation alongside the result without needing the entire conversation that preceded it. It records what was declared; it does not automatically reconstruct someone's thought.
Contribution¶
What someone adds to work: a question, observation, analysis, decision or solution, for example. The word includes contracted and paid work; it does not imply donating time. A contribution can exist before being selected for use.
Author of a declaration and author of the work¶
Someone signing a record takes responsibility for the declaration it contains. This does not make them the author of every work it mentions. A third-party Trace, for example, identifies who declared the relationship while preserving authorship of the related work.
Axiology, judgment, agency and execution¶
These are dimensions the book uses to examine work: defining what matters, evaluating alternatives against criteria and context, taking responsibility for the decision to act and carrying out what was chosen. One person can take part in all of them; the distinction assigns no positions and does not preclude AI assistance. When a test automates verification, it remains relevant to examine who defined what to test and which results would be sufficient.
Human+AI pair¶
A person and AI combining capabilities to work. Collaboration among pairs also combines knowledge held by different people. Each participant retains their authorship, including when results are incomplete or mistaken.
Human direction in work¶
What a person seeks to accomplish, why it matters, which criteria they adopt and which consequences they recognize. Records contextualize that participation, including when execution is performed by AI. The expression fixes no universal division of capabilities between humans and machines.
Sovereign declaration¶
A declaration someone can take responsibility for and preserve without admission by a central authority. Readers retain their judgment; sovereignty makes no content true, imposes no recognition and grants no access to others' resources. Signing, saving and sharing remain distinct operations.
Declared cognitive genealogy¶
A description of contributions participants choose to declare and their relationships, with references to evidence. It may include a question that changed an analysis, a correction or an adopted criterion. Conversation history can serve as evidence; the genealogy highlights what each person claims to have contributed.
Legible Draft and Genealogy 0.1¶
Legible Draft is the draft profile's name. It uses the Genealogy 0.1
technical convention: Markdown with YAML metadata, including genealogy: "0.1".
A draft preserves a formulation, relationship or proposed recognition without
a cryptographic signature. The profile adds exchange and identification rules
while retaining the convention's fields.
Appoint¶
A declaration presenting a formulation attributed to its author: a problem, hypothesis, criterion or proposal, for example. A question can be a complete formulation. An executed solution may be referenced as evidence.
Trace¶
A declaration of a specified relationship with another contribution or source, such as building on, using, referencing or replicating it. The relationship's declarant remains explicit; a third party may also assert it under the norm. The relationship is an attributable claim for the reader to examine.
Nod¶
Retrospective recognition of a consequence received by the beneficiary. It may be reputational, monetary or non-monetary under the specification. For monetary recognition, the declared amount transferred and the description of the benefit received express different things.
Formalization and signed record¶
Formalization creates a new signed declaration after review of its content. It may reference a draft's bytes; the draft remains informal. The signature verifies integrity and attribution to a key. Saving the record privately and sharing it remain separate choices.
External evidence¶
Work, a version, document, test or other source referenced by a record. Content may remain in its original environment under its own permissions. The formulation can be the contribution itself; an external artifact is not required. An accessible record can reference restricted evidence; the reference grants neither access nor authorization for processing by an AI provider.
Identifier and origin¶
A draft's id is a local handle. Interchange also preserves origin and the
hash of exact bytes to distinguish replay, revision and conflict. A formal
record's id is computed from its canonical content. These identifiers serve
different purposes.
Reading and components¶
CH — Coordination Heuristics¶
A private, optional reader perspective that can help express interests, criteria and context when considering contributions. An implementation may use it in reading and should identify its support. CH is neither an official classification of people nor a network allocation rule.
NRC — Nod Recognition Convention¶
The recognition convention adopted by a formalized Appoint, with an exact version and digest. It defines recording recognition in the economic case described, which may remain private. It distinguishes recognition from use permission and the work's licence; it sets no amount or automatic payment entitlement. The applicable text is NRC 0.2 in the specification.
Index and contextual reading¶
An index helps locate records and can be rebuilt from the sources. Contextual reading examines why a contribution may matter to someone's problem. Tools, access and models determine what each environment offers. A conversation may also bring out formulations that have not yet been recorded.
MCP and Agent Skill¶
MCP is the interface through which an AI host can access configured operations, such as reading drafts or preparing declarations. The reference server identifies supported operations and editions. An Agent Skill is an instruction package; loading it installs no model and authorizes no tools. These are additional paths: first use through files can begin without them.
Regime A and Regime B¶
The paper's analytical names for two coordination orders: selection → preservation → search, in Regime A, and preservation → search → selection, in Regime B. The latter allows contributions to remain available before decisions about use, funding or hiring. Its economic advantage depends on costs and conditions in each activity. Resources and allocation decisions remain scarce.
Read the introduction · Try it · Consult the specification
NCO¶
The convention by which a signatory adopts the declaration in the record in
good faith. This edition’s canonical text is Portuguese, with an English
reference translation. The signed content_schema identifies the commitment,
independently of the date. The signature does not certify truth, civil identity
or rights over evidence. See the specification.