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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.