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SOTER Language & Ledger Glossary

Thesis

Shared, precise vocabulary is a precondition for SOTER's philosophy to be usable. Terms such as genotype/phenotype, ontological dissonance, or bitemporality carry specific technical meaning across the language, the ledger, and the philosophy documents; a glossary keeps that meaning stable and prevents drift into casual synonyms.

Problem

Concepts introduced across SOTER's language, runtime, and philosophy layers are easy to restate loosely once they spread across many documents. Without one authoritative short reference, contributors risk using slightly different words for the same concept (or the same word for different concepts), which undermines the precision the rest of the documentation set depends on.

Terms used across SOTER. Polish names appear where the project was born in Polish or where the term refers to a brand-aliased CLI command (e.g. epiphany, ledger). Generic CLI names are preferred in docs — see AGENTS.md.

For a much deeper, narrative explanation of these concepts see docs/CONTEXT_BOOTSTRAP_FILE.md — the "constitutional" reference document. This glossary is the short version.

Argument

The argument here is definitional rather than persuasive: each term below is fixed to one meaning so that other philosophy, specification, and governance documents can rely on it without redefinition.

Language and runtime

Term	Meaning
Logos	The SOTER DSL. Strict, text-first, deterministically compiled. Genotype of the system.
`.model`	Logos source file describing organizational structure, business rules, processes. Single source of truth (genotype).
`.view`	Logos source file describing a perspective / filter over a model (renderable diagram or query).
`.fact`	Append-only Ledger entry. Append-only event log of what actually happened (M3 / Ledger milestone).
`.interaction`	Logos source file describing interactions between systems / agents.
Genesis	Brand-alias for `build`. Pipeline that compiles `.model` → SVG / SQLite / KuzuDB / JSON.
Epiphany	Brand-alias for `server`. Web UI (Django) for browsing and inspecting compiled models.
Ledger	Brand-alias for `ledger init`. Cryptographic append-only journal foundation.
Existence	Brand-alias for `ledger seed`. Fact generator that runs a scenario and writes facts to a ledger.
Providence	Brand-alias for `ledger check`. Verifier of cryptographic integrity (hash chain) of a ledger.
Sophia	AI tandem — Sophia (AI agent for assisting modeling) paired with the human architect.
LogosPrism	Universal visual presentation engine that converts the Logos canonical model into multiple graphical representations such as UML, BPMN, and C4.
Mnemosyne	Component responsible for local organisational memory: dynamically adapted knowledge, distortions, and reinterpretations of global facts, potentially using RAG.
RDAP	Registration Data Access Protocol. Modern protocol for domain and IP registration data access, replacing WHOIS.

Crypto / Ledger

Term	Meaning
Append-only Ledger	Storage abstraction where entries can only be added, never modified or deleted. SOTER uses it for `.fact` records.
Merkle root	Cryptographic hash summarizing a set of facts. SOTER's Ledger generates Merkle roots every N facts as a checkpoint.
Checkpoint	Periodic Merkle root that lets Providence verify the chain without rehashing the entire history.
Ontological Dissonance	Detected tension or mismatch between the declared model and incoming real-world facts; formerly called ontological debt. It produces a reconciliation case.
Reconciliation	Process of explaining and closing detected ontological dissonance, often ending with an amendment proposal or a compensating fact.
Compensating Fact	Technical fact that materialises a correction or balance closure as the result of reconciliation.
Amendment Proposal	Proposed model change, such as process, interaction, procedure, or interpretation adjustment, generated after persistent ontological tension.
Akasha	Original name for the global event/fact ledger in the SOTER ecosystem: the objective record of what has been written.
Bitemporality	Fact modelling with both event occurrence time (`effective_at` / `occurred_at`) and recording time (`recorded_at`).
Observed Facts	Directly recorded objective events arriving from the operational environment into the ledger.
Implied Facts	Facts derived logically and semantically from ontological rules and conservation laws but not directly stated.
State Conservation Laws	System invariants that prevent state changes, such as resource creation, without adequate causal actions.

Philosophy and Advanced Concepts

Term	Meaning
Ontological Pragmatism	Philosophical stance that prioritises the practical usefulness of models for organisations over claims about the final objective nature of reality.
SVO (Subject-Verb-Object)	Grammatical action structure in Logos used to model facts.
Manyfold	Concept of multi-layered projection of a Logos model onto different semantic planes; also a codename for LogosPrism.

Implications for SOTER

Every philosophy, specification, and governance document that uses these terms should use them exactly as defined here, rather than inventing document-local variants.

Boundaries

This glossary does not argue for the concepts it defines; it only fixes their meaning. The case for each concept (e.g. why bitemporality matters, or why ontological dissonance is treated as a signal rather than an error) is made in the other philosophy documents, not here.

Operational Consequences

When writing or reviewing documentation, prefer the term defined here over an ad hoc synonym.
Generic CLI names are preferred over brand-aliases in day-to-day docs; the brand-alias mapping in this glossary exists to resolve older references.

Open Questions

None specific to this document; open conceptual questions live in the essays that argue for each term (see Related Documents).