Configuration

Everything that defines "correct" for your corpus lives in .kb/ — versioned, reviewable, and validated by the gate itself.

file	governs
kb.config.yaml	the collection registry: paths, frontmatter schemas, required sections, checks
schemas/*.json	JSON Schemas for notes, decks, and every two-phase answer
facets.yml	the closed classification axes (domain, maturity, source_type) and the governed open topics list
rubrics/promotion.rubric.yaml	knockout disqualifiers, ordinal dimensions with exemplar anchors, and the routing table
.kb/exemplars/	the exemplar notes the rubric anchors to (hash-pinned into every task)
procedures/*.md	the single source that generates all harness skills
context-anchors.yml	which policy excerpts bind each kb context task
POLICY.md	the non-negotiables — no deletions, no wikilink rewrites, no code-span edits

Evolving the vocabulary

Closed axes and curated topics change only through the proposal queue: a novel value never fails a write — it is dropped from the write and recorded as a proposal for a human to accept or reject. Accepting is the only path by which facets.yml changes.

$ kb queue                      # what's waiting
$ kb queue accept <id>          # adopt into the vocabulary
$ kb queue reject <id>
$ kb queue accept-tension <id> --why "…"   # keep a tension, governed as open

Proposals left unreviewed age into a kb verify failure (KB011) — drift becomes a visible backlog, never a wall your agent routes around.

Migrations

Structural changes to notes go through kb migrate — surgical, idempotent, dry-run by default, and refusing to run on a dirty tree so the rewrite stays reviewable.