LEXICON.md

Lexicon — Construct Projector

Working vocabulary, under the pattern-buffer lexicon rules adopted wholesale: (1) every exported name must double-read for an engineer with zero source-material context; (2) nouns carry the flavor, verbs stay boring. A term not in this file is added here before it is used twice. Engine terms (World, PatternBuffer, frame, thunk, frontier, materialization) are inherited from /home/k/pattern-buffer/docs/LEXICON.md and never redefined.

Term	Definition	Double-read
arc	The hidden authored destination: a conclusion shape plus beats plus clocks, stored as assertions in a plot: frame.	Narrative-canonical (character arc); plain.
beat	A world-state condition with narrative weight (achievable_via), path-independent by definition; never a scripted scene.	Screenwriting-canonical; plain.
clock	A pre-authored conditional process (fires_when → effects through the gate), run by the host's deterministic executor.	Tabletop-canonical (Blades in the Dark progress clocks); plain.
conclusion shape	The destination as state-shape + character delta (drive inverted, desire at cost, …), never a scene. The pitchable theme; the hidden instantiation.	Plain.
theme consent	Session-zero move: the player consents to the theme; the plot instantiation stays hidden. Consent and hiddenness coexist.	Plain.
nudge ladder	The four proportional, diegetic escalation rungs: surface → draw → converge → confront. Timing on the leash, content through the gate.	Plain.
irony delta	Canon minus knows:player, computed host-side as a materialization diff. Arc-weighted irony delta: the subset referenced by pending beats — "how much story remains."	Plain compound; heritage: whitepaper §6 "dramatic irony is a computable quantity."
arc repair	Lazy re-authoring of unreachable beats under the stable conclusion shape, committed as generated supersession in plot: — accommodation, never intervention.	Plain.
refusal branch	The mandatory authored ending in which the world's story concludes around an absent protagonist. Refusal is a path, not an error.	Plain.
arc lint	The deterministic validity checks run on an arc at session zero and after every repair (reachability, path-independence, clock coverage, refusal reachability).	Engineering-canonical (lint); plain.
GM lane	The arc-layer section of the narrator's per-turn briefing: the knows:player scene + NPC intents + ONE pacing directive + resonances. Carries NO plot: content — structural spoiler-prevention (letter 012).	Tabletop GM + plain "lane".
scenario	Session zero's output: the pristine genesis .world — self-identifying via charter, shareable, never written by play.	Plain.
playthrough	A player's accumulated canon within a scenario. v1: one slot per scenario; "start from the beginning" recopies the pristine scenario over the slot.	Plain.
world tick	The serial write phase of a turn: clock pass → NPC world-actions → beat evaluation (last, sees all mutations). Everything that writes canon finishes before the assembly fan-out reads.	Plain.
narrator	The principal agent: renders prose from the briefing, speaks to the player, writes NOTHING to canon, sees no plot:. The only good-tier call besides the NPC engines.	Plain.
turn trace	The --debug emission alongside a turn's prose: briefing frame list (zero-plot: check), cohort trace with tiers, concealment-audit result, triggered beats/clocks/nudges. A formatting of session:main + audit rows, never a second bookkeeping.	Plain.
session frame	The host-owned named frame (session:main) holding the turn ledger and pacing receipts — turn boundaries, nudge directives, rung refusals, repair lineages. Same mechanism and doorway as plot:; structurally absent from canon. Everything pacing knows folds from it.	Plain.
refusal clock	The per-arc REFUSAL-rung clock, now an explicit-abandonment Occurred(event:abandoned_<arc>) condition (founder ruling 2026-06-25 / Cx 176/178): it fires ONLY when the player decisively walks away — NEVER on quiet turns. Turns never force a close (a counter-based refusal is a lint error and is suppressed at runtime). Stories conclude on the narrative's decisive event: a player commitment, an authored deadline/loss, or explicit abandonment.	Plain.
session zero	The unified creation interview (ingest or live, one wizard under a which-sections-are-known switch): charter, spine, entry, provider, lines-and-veils, arc.	Tabletop-canonical; plain.
lines and veils	Player content boundaries collected at session zero, stored as covenant-style rules evaluated in the render path — never prompt text.	Tabletop-canonical (safety tools); plain.
dramatic confirmation beat	The narrowed dispatch gate: a proportional in-fiction confirmation before irreversible player stakes. A dramatic beat, not a permission wall.	Plain.
dispositional spine	The minimum character material the conclusion generator needs: two ranked drives + one fear or breaks_if. Session-zero invariant: no playable character without one.	Plain.
player profile	Host-side per-player store: provider config, credentials, lines and veils. Never in the .world file — worlds ship without secrets or another player's boundaries.	Plain.