Prose Conventions

Enforce RFC 2119 modal hierarchy, prohibit marketing adjectives and hedging filler, use absolute ISO-8601 dates, and validate directive prose airtightness.

Canonical reference for prose discipline across every authored Markdown surface. The summary at CLAUDE.md Conventions is the inline declaration; this page is the standalone reference downstream contributors cite.

Directive prose uses the RFC 2119 modal hierarchy: MUST, MUST NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, MAY. Each carries the binding-strength the RFC defines. Lowercase modals (must, should) carry no normative weight and are used only in narrative prose where no obligation is being declared.

2. Forbidden Vocabulary

2.1 Marketing adjectives

The terms powerful, seamless, robust, cutting-edge, next-generation, world-class, enterprise-grade, and equivalents are forbidden in user-facing artifacts unless concretely substantiated with measured evidence. The substantiation cites a benchmark, a comparison, a measurement, or an external validation source.

2.2 Hedging filler

The terms basically, kind of, sort of, in some sense, to some extent, and equivalents are forbidden in directive text. Directive prose is binding; hedging concedes the binding force the prose claims.

2.3 UDA airtightness

The Universal-Directive-Airtightness check at scripts/dev/validate_ecosystem.py enforces a closed hedge lexicon (maybe, might, could, should probably, usually, generally speaking, in most cases, mostly, typically, often, or similar, etc., and so on) on lines that carry binding prescription. Hedge tokens cited as the rule's own subject matter (e.g., a list of forbidden words on a forbid-list page) are exempt by the validator's definitional-marker mechanism.

3. Date References

Dates are absolute ISO-8601 (YYYY-MM-DD) at every reference. Relative dates (yesterday, last week, recently) are forbidden in artifacts that persist beyond their authoring session.

4. Validators

scripts/dev/validate_ecosystem.py's UDA airtightness check is the mechanical enforcement surface for §2.3. The per-write markdown family of conformity-grep validators enforces the broader prose-quality bar at PreToolUse Write/Edit hook boundaries.