# Glossary

Status: working orientation  
Source role: corpus operating vocabulary  
Layer: semantic guidance  
Last updated: 2026-07-08

This glossary defines the working vocabulary used across the Work Vault Wiki.

## Terms

- Canon: approved or explicitly current source-of-record material.
- Candidate: material proposed for possible reuse but not yet approved.
- Draft: work in progress.
- Archive: retained for history or provenance.
- Deprecated: material that should not be treated as current except for lineage.
- Generated index: a page produced from scripts, manifests, inventories, or other repo data.
- Semantic wiki layer: markdown/wiki pages used for navigation, compression, and interpretation.
- Raw artifact: original or source-like file preserved as evidence or witness.
- Witness/reference material: material that should be preserved and cited but not necessarily treated as current semantic canon.
- Inbound original: a provenance-bearing intake file.
- Standard-named source copy: a normalized or repo-standard source file preferred for citation when available.
- Published external metadata: metadata imported from an external published surface.
- Attractor: a gateway for recurring meaning-patterns.
- Concept: a stabilized semantic page that survives across branches.
- Project family: a lineage-aware project branch in the wiki.
- Source role: a manifest classification describing a file's place in the source layer.
- Artifact type: a file-kind classification used for source-layer browsing.
- Mutation: a change to the corpus, wiki, or source layer.
- Lineage: provenance across versions, copies, and branch splits.

## Rule

When status is unclear, say so. Do not silently promote material to canon.