---
name: writing-style
description: Mandatory present-tense-only rule for every file written in this package - no history, no change notes, no past-tense references to the tree, no retired or deprecated markers. Use before writing or editing ANY document, record or data file, and whenever recording something that changed.
---

# writing-style

**Every file describes what is true right now. Nothing else.**

Full rule: `.{provider}/rules/document.rule.md`. This skill is the operational check.

## The one question

Before saving any file, ask: _would this sentence still be here if the tree had always been in its
current state?_

If no — it is history. Delete it.

## Banned outright

| pattern                           | instead                                    |
| --------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------ |
| a rename described as a rename    | describe the current name and nothing else |
| a previous location               | state where it is                          |
| an unused marker                  | delete the record                          |
| a retired or deprecated status    | delete the record                          |
| a deletion date                   | say nothing; it does not exist             |
| an original form                  | describe what it is                        |
| a corrected assumption            | describe what it is                        |
| a move described as a move        | describe where it is                       |
| a superseded value in parentheses | state the current value                    |
| a change framed as this change    | describe the state                         |

## Caught means fixed

The moment a violation is seen — reading a file, searching, opening it for something unrelated —
**fix it in that same turn.** Never report-and-continue, never ask, never defer, never call it out of
scope. This covers every kind of staleness: wrong paths, dead references, stale counts,
contradictions between documents.

Deferring creates debt that gets forgotten and leaves documents contradicting each other.

## Where history goes

Two destinations only: the history accumulator the configuration resolves, and a message to the
operator. Never a document, a record, a configuration or a data file.

## When something changes

Rewrite the affected text so it describes the new state. Do not append, annotate, strike through or
mark. Where a record's subject stops existing, remove the record rather than retiring it.

## Third-party platform facts are not history

A fact about a platform, a runtime or an external tool this package runs beside is current-state
operational knowledge even when it references versions, and it is written in present tense.

- Write: a named setting **does not exist** in that runtime.
- Not: it _was removed_.
- Write: a named interface **returns** its result from a stated version onward.
- Not: it _was fixed_ in a later release.

The distinction: **our** files, folders and records carry no history. **Their** behavior across
versions is a fact about the environment, and the tense scan exempts it.

## A rule may carry the measurement that produced it

Inside the rule it justifies, and nowhere else. The permitted half is the SHAPE that failed and how
it presents; the refused half is who did it, when, and in what order. A measurement stated as a
shape usually needs no past tense at all, so rephrasing comes first and the permission is reached
for last.

## Restructuring or relocating a document

A structural change to an existing document — reshaping it, reformatting it, **or moving it** — is
never done in one step. Moving a document to another path, folder or governance layer is a rewrite of
it and takes the same approval as rewriting its contents.

The sequence, in order:

1. **Classify.** Read it whole and name the narrowest accurate concern.
2. **Raise any placement conflict as a question.** Where the requested location is illegal under the
   grammar, enumerate the legal endings and what each costs. Never resolve it by picking one and
   moving the file.
3. **Write the draft beside the live file.** The original stays readable throughout.
4. **Publish the migration map** — every block and its destination, and any deletion listed
   explicitly with its reason.
5. **Wait.** This is the checkpoint rather than a courtesy.
6. **On approval** — replace, delete the draft, update every pointer, and run the verify command.
7. **Extract the durable half** to the history accumulator.

**Never delete the source in the step that creates its replacement.** Where the host resolves no
checkpoint, the original is the only thing the replacement can be compared against.

## Self-check before save

Scan for a past-form verb attached to anything in this tree, and for any date attached to one of our
own actions. Every hit is a violation unless it describes third-party platform state, or unless it is
the measurement a rule states inside its own justification.