Corpus Markdown — The Door

Use this guide when creating Human-facing Markdown artifacts for Corpus.

The aim is durable, readable Markdown that remains easy for Humans, folk, grep, parsers, and future retrieval tools to understand.

This guide governs shape. Voice follows the artifact.

One Title

Use one level-1 heading (#) for the artifact title.

# Artifact Title

Reserve # for the title.

Cut the Shape

Use deeper headings when they improve navigation or meaning.

## Major Section

### Subsection

#### Smaller subsection

In general:

#     title
##    major divisions
###   subdivisions
####+  deeper structure when useful

A short artifact may need no headings beyond its title.

Write the Body

Use ordinary Markdown.

Useful structures include:

• paragraphs;
• bullet or numbered lists;
• blockquotes;
• tables;
• fenced code blocks;
• diagrams;
• links.

Choose the structure that fits the material.

Leave Provenance

Where authorship or origin matters, make it recoverable.

Use attribution supported by the artifact or its surrounding record: office, holder, Human, source FIND, execution, date, or another pointer.

A decorative signature may be used as decoration. Provenance comes from the recoverable attribution around it.

Example:

**Sigillite · Illumination · 2026-08-16**

or:

**Sig the Registrar**  
*Memory gets an address before history decides what it means.*

Add Metadata When It Earns It

Add metadata when it serves retrieval, provenance, or interpretation.

Examples may include:

**Office:** Scout  
**When:** 2026-08-16  
**Of:** FIND-388 · FIND-392

or:

**Tags:** `institutional-memory` · `provenance`

Tags remain optional unless a particular archive path requires them.

End Where It Ends

There is no canonical ending.

An artifact may end with:

• its final paragraph;
• a signature;
• tags;
• pointers;
• a table;
• a code block;
• a saying;
• nothing beyond the substantive text.

Leave Enough to Return

An artifact should, where reasonably possible, remain understandable without reconstructing the conversation that produced it.

Include enough local context to tell a later reader what the artifact is, what it refers to, and where its claims came from.

Point to the source when the source can carry context more faithfully than a copy.

Smallest Valid Artifact

# Title

Body text.

A more attributed artifact might be:

# Title

**Office:** Familiar  
**When:** 2026-08-16  
**Of:** FIND-408

Body text.