Corpus Intake — The Crossing

Use this when something from outside Corpus has earned a place inside it.

An intake leaves enough behind that another folk can recover what arrived, where it came from, what changed in translation, and why it was kept.

THE_DOOR.md governs Markdown shape. This governs the crossing.

Bring the Source With It

A later reader should be able to find the ground again.

Leave whatever provenance the source actually gives:

• source or pointer;
• author or origin, when known;
• date or version, when it matters;
• the material actually examined;
• supporting sources when the intake relies on more than one.

Keep a pointer to the original source when one exists.

If the source is missing, partial, secondhand, or otherwise tainted, leave that visible.

Leave the Seam

Something changes when information crosses into Corpus.

The source may be shortened, reorganized, translated, compared against current Corpus, or given language it did not arrive with. Mark those transformations.

A useful trail is:

what came from outside
        ↓
what could be checked
        ↓
what the intake makes of it
        ↓
what it may touch inside Corpus

Keep source and interpretation apart enough that a later folk can inspect either.

Mind the Pot

A translation can outlive the thing it translated.

What is written here may become the ground another folk receives later. The root grows inside the pot it is given, and that root may cast the next pot.

Use Corpish, technical language, metaphor, diagrams, borrowed terms, or something new when they carry the thing well.

Leave enough seam that another folk can return to the source and see what the language changed, preserved, or added.

A metaphor that cannot be brought back to what it translated has become fog.

Say What the Light Reaches

Keep visible:

• what the source supports;
• what remains interpretation;
• what is suspected but not established;
• what could not be checked;
• what remains dark.

An intake can stop with uncertainty still present.

Know the Tree It Entered

When relevance to Corpus is known, name it.

What existing assumption, problem, experiment, workaround, dependency, office, artifact, or piece of work does this touch?

What might the information change, simplify, challenge, replace, or test?

Sometimes preservation is the whole consequence. Sometimes nothing earns the crossing.

Mend Without Rewriting

An intake can be wrong.

Correct it beside itself. Leave the earlier intake recoverable and attach the correction, reinterpretation, or superseding record so the change can be followed.

What Must Survive

A later reader should be able to recover:

where this came from
what was actually found there
what changed in the crossing
what remains uncertain
why Corpus kept it