glossary.md — Consistent language for the wiki

Read alongside CLAUDE.md and purpose.md. Where a term means two different things in EPI material, this file makes the distinction load- bearing so wiki pages don’t quietly drift into the wrong sense.

The agent should consult this file when filing or updating any page that uses one of the doubled-meaning terms below. When in doubt, prefer the explicit phrase over the shortcut: write “the wiki’s three rates of change” or “the practice’s architectural levels” rather than the bare phrase “three layers” in any context where confusion is possible.


The doubled meaning: “three layers”

Two distinct EPI concepts have collided under the same words. Never use the bare phrase “three layers” without context.

Sense 1 — the wiki’s three rates of change (CLAUDE.md §0)

How fast something changes in this wiki. The discipline that keeps fast-moving wrapper material from being mistaken for slow-moving core.

  1. The Tools — canonical, slow. SEW, Inner Map, FACT, persona interviews, the withhold process, and the rest of the proven library. Treat as gospel.
  2. The Principles — hardening. The Guiding Principles. Close to solid; ratified statement-by-statement.
  3. The Wrapper — fast, contested. How tools get sequenced, framed, taught. Held as competing Models and Framings until the team converges.

Use this sense when discussing how the wiki organizes and protects material. Refer to it as “the three rates of change” when context could be ambiguous.

Sense 2 — the practice’s architectural levels (from EPI Expansion Strategy v5)

How the practice itself is built — what a member is developing, what they do day to day, and what they engage when it serves.

  1. The Six Facets — the constitutional value set the practice answers to (Translating the Body’s Wisdom, Navigating Your Inner World, Discovering Your True Power, Getting Unstuck, Aligning with Essence, Living Your Big Life). A practitioner orients from them, never completes them. Lives inside Guiding Principles as a facet page type.
  2. The Core Practice — day-one tools for every practitioner: the Inner Map, SEW, and a daily 90-second meditation.
  3. The Deep-Dive Tools — the rest of the curriculum, engaged when it serves: Karpman Triangle, personas, FACT, projection work, Four Pillars of Integrity, and so on.

Use this sense when discussing how the practice is structured for practitioners. Refer to it as “the architectural levels” or “the constitutional / core / deep-dive structure” when context could be ambiguous.

Why both must be preserved

  • Sense 1 is how the wiki protects itself from contamination — it’s a meta-discipline about documentation.
  • Sense 2 is how the practice is taught to a newcomer — it’s a description of the work.
  • Collapsing them loses information in both directions. The wiki’s three rates apply to all wiki material including material about the architectural levels.

Container names

  • Guiding Principles — the constitutional layer. Was “Integrity Layer” until 2026-05-25; renamed for clarity now that the team is committed to the form. Lives at wiki/guiding-principles/. Holds:
    • Principles — numbered constitutional statements (“Principle 4,” “Principle 11”). Template templates/principle.md.
    • Facets — the Six Facets, the value set the practice develops. Each facet is its own page using templates/facet.md. New page type as of v5 ingest 2026-05-25.
  • Tools — proven core practice tools. Live at wiki/practice/tools/. Status canonical by default. Examples: SEW, Inner Map, FACT, persona interviews. Template templates/tool.md.
  • Models — candidate ways of structuring how a member works through the practice over time. Live at wiki/practice/structure/. Examples: the Twelve Steps (waning), the Practice Cycle (candidate). Template templates/model.md.
  • Containers — forms practice happens in: solitary daily practice, the open meeting, the Guide–Traveler relationship, the Safe Harbor opening. Live at wiki/practice/ or wiki/structure/. Template templates/container.md.
  • Framings — specific wordings/packagings of any of the above, drafted for newcomers. Multiple framings of the same thing coexist as candidate until the team converges. Template templates/framing.md.
  • Forks — named, explicit tensions or decisions. First-class and visible. Live at wiki/forks/. Template templates/fork.md.

Statuses

Principle status (Guiding Principles only)

ratified (locked / binding gospel) → under-review (close to solid, not locked; conflicts are tensions not violations) → proposed (newly drafted, not yet team-reviewed).

Convergence status (Models, Framings)

canonical (the team chose this — only one per slot, record WHY) · candidate (live, in contention; default for new wrapper material) · waning (still held, losing favor, no replacement chosen yet — OPEN work) · superseded (a Fork resolved against it — CLOSED work) · alternative (succeeded but honorable; set aside, still valuable for particular learners).

Critical: waningsuperseded. Waning is open work; superseded is closed lineage. When in doubt, a thing is waning until a Fork explicitly resolves it.

Tool status

canonical (the proven core; treat as gospel) · evolving (an active revision is underway; prior wording kept in a ## Prior version section).

Container, page-not-yet-written

  • needs export — the team has written it; awaiting drop into raw/.
  • needs drafting — the System Map names it but it hasn’t been written yet.

Practice-structure slots

Pages of type: model live in wiki/practice/structure/. Each model declares a slot: in its frontmatter. Pages in different slots are not alternatives to each other — they answer different questions and may be complementary. Convergence happens per slot, not across slots.

The four current slots:

SlotQuestion it answersTime scaleExample pages
practice-structureWhat shape does long-term practice take?Years, ongoingtwelve-steps
in-the-moment-formWhat is the repeated micro-move?Minutespractice-cycle (needs export)
onboarding-arcWhat order do we introduce the tools in?Weeksilc-fundamentals-arc
ongoing-competency-arcWhat capacities does a practitioner develop over time?Years, ongoingsix-facets-developmental-arc

If a new model appears that doesn’t fit one of these four slots, do not silently invent a new slot value — surface it as a team-review item and let the conversation decide whether the slot taxonomy itself needs to expand.

The closest neighbors are practice-structure and ongoing-competency-arc — both answer “what does long-term practice look like?” They differ in what they organize around: stations of the path (practice-structure) vs. capacities the practitioner develops (ongoing-competency-arc). The team has not yet decided whether these are complementary or competing.


Roles in the practice

  • Host — anyone willing to follow the meeting format. Eligibility is willingness, not credential (principle-11).
  • Guide / Traveler — role names for the more experienced practitioner and the one asking to be guided in the 1:1 form (principle-20, principle-21). Roles are mobile — a practitioner can be a Guide in one relationship and a Traveler in another. Asymmetry is functional, never positional.
  • Alternates from v5 strategy doc, held as framing candidates: walking partner, practice partner, companion, accompanier. None canonical; team to converge.

Vocabulary to avoid (per the resolved facilitator-pathway-vs-no-professional-class fork): facilitator (use host), steward (when applied to a person — describes the superseded development-pathway model), certified / trained facilitator / credentialed (re-introduce gatekeeping the fork resolved against). When wrapper material drifts into this vocabulary, the agent surfaces it per CLAUDE.md §8.


Practice vocabulary

Bodify (verb)

To drop into the body, right now — and when emotion is present, let the body express it physically so the cycle can complete.

Used across the curriculum as a session-opening cue (“bodify your current state”) and as a mid-tool prompt (“bodify the persona you discovered,” “bodify one withhold”). Closely paired with — and the active form of — sew; the expression half of bodifying connects to experiencing-your-feelings.

Use bodify as a verb in wiki prose where the meaning is “do the practice in the body now, including physical expression if emotion is present”. Avoid using it as a generic synonym for “feel” or “notice” — the practice it names is more specific.

The dedicated practice page is at bodify.


References by name

Per CLAUDE.md §6, statements are referenced by name and number, never restated: “Principle 4,” “Step 7,” “the SEW tool.” When wording changes, it changes in ONE place. If you find yourself about to restate another page’s content, link instead.