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Hyperpolymath Standards

Organisation-wide standards, specifications, and governance templates for the Hyperpolymath ecosystem.

Quick Start

See the main README for the full standards catalogue.

Key Concepts

• Descriptiles -- the six machine-readable files that describe what a repository is and what state it is in: STATE, META, ECOSYSTEM, AGENTIC, NEUROSYM, PLAYBOOK. Most hyperpolymath repos carry these under .machine_readable/descriptiles/; some, including rsr-template-repo, use machine-readable/ with a hyphen. Do not assume one from the other. (The older label "6a2" is deprecated; there is no LANGUAGES descriptile.)
• Contractiles -- the normative counterpart: what a repository must, intends to, and must not do. Mustfile, Intentfile, Trustfile, Adjustfile, plus Bustfile/Dustfile sets. Descriptiles are is, contractiles are ought; see contractiles/ in this repo.
• ANCHOR -- ruled 2026-09-08 to be both descriptile and contractile: it records an observed drift and mandates realignment. It is the transition edge between the two families. Its specification has not yet been written (tracked as issue #22).
• DEED -- the format these files are written in, formerly named A2ML. The rename to .deed was ruled final on 2026-09-03. A formal grammar (syntax, semantics, typechecking) is in review as PR #752 and is not yet merged -- until it lands there is no deed/ directory on main at all -- the spec arrives with that PR.
• Governance framework -- canonical source for language policy, build system standards (Mustfile/justfile, no Makefiles), licensing framework (PMPL-1.0-or-later), CI/CD enforcement workflows, and reusable CODE_OF_CONDUCT/CONTRIBUTING/SECURITY templates.

Monorepo architecture

The format specification satellites have been absorbed into this monorepo, so cross-spec changes can be made atomically. The directory names still carry the older -a2ml suffix; renaming them to deed is planned but has not happened, so the paths below are current and correct.

Subdirectory	Content
meta-a2ml/	META spec, IANA registration material
state-a2ml/	STATE spec
ecosystem-a2ml/	ECOSYSTEM spec
playbook-a2ml/	PLAYBOOK spec
agentic-a2ml/	AGENTIC spec, contractiles, Nickel configs
neurosym-a2ml/	NEUROSYM spec
anchor-a2ml/	ANCHOR satellite -- the spec itself is not yet written (#22)
axel-protocol/	AXEL protocol spec
contractiles/	Contractile family specifications
(none yet)	DEED grammar arrives as deed/spec/ with PR #752 -- not on main
0-ai-gatekeeper-protocol/	AI gatekeeper protocol
k9-coordination-protocol/	K9 coordination protocol

CI infrastructure

• Reusable workflows -- scorecard-reusable.yml, codeql-reusable.yml, governance-reusable.yml, hypatia-scan-reusable.yml, etc. -- callable from per-repo wrappers so security/compliance gating evolves centrally. SHA-pinned per the security policy.
• Language-maturation grades -- ARG (Adoption Readiness Grade) + FRG (Foundations Readiness Grade) under adoption-readiness-grades/ and foundations-readiness-grades/. Per-language profiles live in <repo>/spec/{ARG,FRG}-PROFILE.adoc and are aggregated into the nextgen-languages dashboard. TRG (Trust) + CRG (Compliance) profile templates also live in standards/.
• GH Actions budget rebalancing -- ongoing rebalancing of the estate's CI minutes consumption. Canonical caller workflows ship at the conservative-cost defaults (e.g. scorecard weekly Monday 04:23 UTC, not daily). See issue #231 for the scorecard fan-out and issue #233 for the CodeQL policy decision.

Related Projects

• a2ml -- the format's typed core and specification
• a2ml-ecosystem -- ecosystem hub for the format
• developer-ecosystem -- Development workflow tools
• reposystem -- Repository system management (contractiles, scaffoldia)
• rsr-template-repo -- Rhodium Standard Repository template
• scaffoldia -- repository scaffolding
• Hypatia -- Neurosymbolic CI/CD scanning
• nextgen-languages -- Estate language-status dashboard with ARG/FRG grade matrix

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.adoc, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.adoc and GOVERNANCE.adoc.

License

PMPL-1.0-or-later