Markdown for LLMs
Bridges between vocabularies
The source Markdown for this article. Copy it into your assistant or download it as a text file.
# Bridges between vocabularies No vocabulary covers everything. This page maps the five ways the corpus connects vocabularies to each other and to outside knowledge — from declared edition correspondence to hand-written mapping packages — with a note on how mature each one is. No commands are needed to follow this page. Each claim carries a status in words with a letter mark; the full legend is on the [topic index](/corpus/#how-this-topic-marks-confidence). ## Edition alignment An `align` block declares correspondence between two editions of a source, with a relation, a status, and a reviewer. Four maturity facts, kept in sync with the alignment notes: - Declaration support: the grammar compiles in real packages (**S**). - Reading tools: no structural query returns align rows — the links question covers produces, reads, anchored, alias, and subtype only, so do not build tooling that assumes align rows are queryable (**S**). - Adoption: broad — over two thousand blocks across dozens of source files observed in the corpus (**S**). - Semantic effect: none — the block stays document metadata and never becomes rule content (**S**). ## Hand-written mapping packages Where alignment exists today, it is an ordinary package of hand-written mapping rules, not generated output — a **team convention** (T). The precedent maps shared dictionary concepts — places, currencies, countries, courts — to external knowledge-base records. Prefer this pattern when the mapping needs human judgment: it is versioned, pinned, and reviewed like any other package. ## Concept catalog A derived full-text index over compiled packages helps authors find candidate concepts before they coin new ones; it **requires a source checkout** (I). The catalog never merges semantics — it suggests, and the author still writes an explicit import or mapping. Its command surface offers build, search, candidates, and show operations over the compiled snapshot. ## Narrow alignment profiles A dispatcher runs bespoke, hard-registered bridge modules for narrow pairs: physical quantities against a units knowledge base, and order theory against two proof assistants — **experimental** (X). Each bridge is custom code for its pair, with its own policy and report schemas. This is the right shape when two formal systems need a precise, verified seam — and the wrong shape for anything broad, where the bespoke cost never pays off. "Verified" here has a hard boundary: the check runs under a declared interpretation, and semantic equivalence is not proved — the same line the import report format draws with `declared_mapping_assumption` and `semantic_equivalence_proved: false` (see [the alignment boundary](/corpus/import/#the-alignment-boundary-in-the-report-format)). ## Import mapping External knowledge arrives through versioned import recipes: a recipe pins its inputs and its mapping, and the ingest surface builds or checks it (`law ingest check <recipe.json>`). This **requires a source checkout** (I): `ingest` is absent from the public composition; see [Import](/corpus/import/). Mapping profiles tune how much of the external graph becomes rules versus plain retrievable knowledge. What does not fit stays out loudly: profile reports carry a per-decision status and only accepted entries proceed, and a mismatched recipe is refused with an error rather than coerced silently (**I**). A newer source-to-facts mapping contract exists as a schema with no confirmed engine surface yet — **schema only** (O). ## Which bridge to reach for - Same concept needed by two acts → share one dictionary import; no bridge at all. Counterexample: mapping between two local copies of "country" instead of importing the shared dictionary doubles maintenance and silently forks meaning. - Correspondence between two existing vocabularies → a hand-written mapping package (**T**). Counterexample: a type alias cannot join two dictionaries — it only renames one type. - Correspondence between two editions of one source → an `align` block. Counterexample: two acts in different languages are not two editions of one source; aligning them asserts a correspondence the sources never made. - Candidate discovery before coining anything → the concept catalog (**I**). Counterexample: a catalog hit is a pointer, never an identity claim — it never licenses skipping the explicit import. ## What bridges are not Some subject-matter packages reuse the word "bridge" in their names for ordinary domain rules — tolling rules, identity rules, forensic linkage. Those are regular packages, not mapping mechanisms, and this page makes no claims about them. ## Where to go next - The companion page on [local and shared vocabulary](/corpus/vocabulary/local-and-shared/) covers the dictionaries that mappings usually target. - The companion page on the [audit surface](/corpus/vocabulary/audit/) shows how to query who reads what across packages. - For construct-level detail, see [the Vocabulary construct reference](/constructs/vocabulary/). - For structural queries over links, see [LawQL](/lawql/).