docs(steering): terminology rule -- name the behavior, not the virtue

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Marius Ciepluch
2026-10-29 11:57:51 +01:00
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# Terminology
[Purpose: name tool and report behavior concretely; avoid virtue words that stand in for a specification]
## Rule
Do not use "honest", "honesty", or compounds of them ("-honesty", "honest read") in new documents,
specs, measurement NOTES, commit messages, or summaries. The word asserts a character trait of the
tool; what the project actually builds are specific, testable behaviors. Name the behavior:
| instead of | write |
|---|---|
| instrument honesty / honest instrument | failure visibility (a failure is reported as itself, never folded into a clean-looking zero) |
| honest `unadjudicated` / honest silence | `unadjudicated` reported, not reported as clean |
| honest dashboard | measurement dashboard (not a CI gate) |
| honest read / the honest answer is | the measured reading is / the stated limit is |
| honest degradation | degradation with its reason |
The steering rule "verify the instrument before you believe the measurement" already carries the
substance; "honesty" adds no information to it.
## Unchanged (do not rewrite)
- The `pair-corpus-honesty` spec: its name, directory, and documents keep the term; it is a
historical identifier, referenced by other specs.
- Committed documents before 2026-10-29 keep their wording; correctness of the record beats style.
- Verbatim quotes of older documents stay verbatim.
## Added
2026-10-29, after the access-control-prover requirements amendment used "instrument honesty" and the
maintainer rejected the phrasing.