DeepContext

Deep Context is a practice for working on shared knowledge together when the people involved don't agree on the words for the things. It's a small set of conventions -- plain markdown, wikilinks, and named edges -- that let each contributor keep their own vocabulary while the graph as a whole stays navigable.

This repository is where the practice is being worked out in public. The conventions, the node drafts, and the conversation all live here on GitHub. Comments and contributions are welcome -- via Issues, Discussions, and Pull Requests.

Why this exists

Most collaborative wikis drift toward write-only: contributors keep adding, but readers can't find what they need, the people doing the curation burn out, and newcomers can't find a way in. [[Wikis Without Curation Drift Toward Write-Only]] walks through the pattern across several wiki traditions.

Deep Context tries a different route. Keep each contributor's own naming instead of flattening everything into one shared vocabulary. Let different ways of framing the same territory sit alongside each other. Treat the work of curation as a set of named, discussable commitments rather than an editorial instinct that only the insiders can see. The nodes in this graph are the result -- rules that make vocabulary diversity structurally supportable, and enough visible scaffolding that a newcomer can find their way around without having to learn an oral tradition first.

The tension this addresses

Two dynamics shape how shared-knowledge communities form and fall apart.

Founders' words calcify into the group's words. Whoever shows up first picks the early terms -- the metaphors for the problem, the labels for the concepts, the predicate names that structure the graph. By the time later participants arrive, the vocabulary is already in use, so their position shifts from proposer to adopter or dissenter. The terms aren't necessarily wrong; the problem is that the people who had to live with them didn't get a chance to shape them. [[Founding Vocabularies Constrain Later Participants]] records the dynamic, grounded in conversations where the author of this graph watched it happen around his own early word-choices.

Accumulated vocabulary becomes a barrier. As a community keeps working, its shared vocabulary grows -- more predicates, more named distinctions, more established senses of previously-ordinary words. Growth feels like progress from inside. From outside, it looks like a debt newcomers have to pay before they can contribute, and many don't. [[Shared Languages Get Intimidating Over Time]] traces this across wikis, online communities, and long-running groups where early contributors ended up occupying all the senior positions.

Together, these two dynamics produce a predictable cycle: founders pick terms; the vocabulary converges and calcifies into authority ([[Consensus Creates Priesthoods]]); later participants either adopt it, stay silent about their own framings, or leave to form parallel communities with parallel vocabularies. The reinvention of the same concepts under different names every decade is the visible symptom.

This project is an experiment in whether that cycle can be interrupted. [[Vocabulary Diversity Is a Feature]] names the stance (keep each vocabulary intact); [[Translation Over Convergence]] names what happens at the contact surface (translate, don't normalize); [[Terms Become Common Through Unanimity, Not Precedent]] names the process for how a term crosses from one contributor's dialect into the shared vocabulary (it doesn't, until participants explicitly agree). Whether this actually works is what the graph is being built to test.

Where to start

Different entry points by what you want to understand.

The conventions -- Contracts specify node shapes (Contract, Decision, Conviction, Gloss, Observation, and so on) with RFC 2119 compliance rules. Start with [[Markdown Node Contract]] for the base shape, then [[Contract Form Contract]] for how contracts themselves are structured.

The choices and their reasoning -- Decisions each record what was chosen, what was considered, and what would change the call. [[Adopt Wikilinks and Named Edges]] is the foundational one.

The stance -- Convictions are normative positions the practice holds. [[Human Authority Over Augmentation Systems]], [[Vocabulary Diversity Is a Feature]], and [[Translation Over Convergence]] are the current six.

The direction -- Aspirations name what the project pulls toward with honest acknowledgement of the gap. [[The Second Cycle of Contribution Happens]] is the core success metric.

The open questions -- Observations record descriptive claims with epistemic grounds (Empirical, Retrospective, Contested). Contested observations like [[LLM Assistance Widens the Participation Gap]] are claims the project takes seriously but does not yet have a definitive answer to.

The predicates -- Predicates document the typed edges themselves. [[conforms_to]], [[grounded_in]], [[informed_by]], and [[contrasts_with]] are the most load-bearing.

Link legend

The graph is held together by [[wikilinks]] and predicate::[[Target]] named edges. Six surface forms appear in node bodies.

Resolved wikilink -- source [[Target]]; rendered as a working link that preserves the brackets, so the source pattern stays legible on the site. [[Atomic Node]] is a live example; clicking it opens the Gloss. Brackets are kept deliberately (see the Decision).

Pipe wikilink -- source [[Target|Display]]; rendered as the display text only so it reads naturally in prose. The full filename stem on a Gloss like Compound Node is long; the pipe lets a reference read as Compound Node (displayed as "Compound Node", linked to the Gloss).

Ghost link -- a named but unseeded concept. The target has no node yet, so the graph shows the name in ghost styling. Every identity block in this graph currently carries has_lifecycle::[[Seed Stage]], but [[Seed Stage]] itself is a ghost -- the lifecycle vocabulary is named but not yet seeded as nodes.

External marker -- a concept named in another graph. The ↗ suffix is the source-form convention. [[Egregore]]↗ is a real one in this graph -- the Conviction that [[Agents Translate, Not Extract]] names it as the adjacent vision this project engages with.

Plain URL -- a link to the web outside this graph. For example, https://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2014/12/deep-context.html.

Named edge -- a typed relation in bullet form, e.g. conforms_to::[[Gloss Form Contract]]. The predicate to the left of :: names the relation; the wikilink to the right names the target. Each Predicate is itself a node specifying what the predicate carries, what it distinguishes itself from, and the node shapes it connects.

Unresolved and external targets render with visibly-distinct styling so a reader can see where the graph ends.

Form types

Each node conforms to one of nine Form Contracts. Each contract names a shape and a compliance rule; the Decisions that ground each contract carry the reasoning.

Browse by taxonomy

For agents

Agents collaborating on this graph should start with AGENTS.md, which names the curator stance (suggest, flag, translate -- do not rewrite a contributor's vocabulary without confirmation) and points at the taxonomy entry points. Agents joining a fork should read their own fork's AGENTS.md first; forks may customize the stance.

How to contribute

This repository is the source of truth for the published graph. Contributions are welcome through GitHub.

The practice is Egregore-style: forkable, collaboratively editable, no single editorial gatekeeper. The curation discipline lives in the conventions, not in permissions.