cosmoes.org

cosmoes.org · edition 0.5.4 · revised 3 Nov 2026 · one line per section

The OES specifications

An OES, an organizational enumeration system, describes a domain by enumerating everything in it

Outline

  1. The short version — one grammar, a dialect per domain, an organization's additions
  2. 1 What an OES is — a domain enumerated as files, a database and a source to render
  3. 2 Three scales — the grammar, a domain's dialect, an organization's additions
  4. 3 What MacroCOSM gives every MiniCOSM — the parts of the shared grammar every MiniCOSM inherits unchanged
  5. 4 What a MiniCOSM declares — the manifest: one file that declares a MiniCOSM to any reader
  6. 5 What a MicroCOSM may change — an organization's additions: what they may add and may never touch
  7. 6 The specifications and how they relate — four documents: the grammar, the language of programs, two MiniCOSMs
  8. 7 The picture — the grammar, its MiniCOSMs, the language over them, the split
  9. 8 Editions — editions, revisions, format versions and the canonical pages
  10. 9 Implementations — enough and Comprise, the reference implementations
  11. 10 Open formats — open formats, the subject's files, the way out never sold
  12. Changes — what each edition changed, newest first
  13. Colophon — copyright, the canonical edition and its source

Glossary

Checks
constraints on the whole volume, run on every write — defined in §3 What MacroCOSM gives every MiniCOSM
COSM
the family's name — defined in §2 Three scales
edition
a published state of one of these texts — defined in §8 Editions
Items, fields and references
Items, fields and references, a row with a stable id and a kind (P:offering/ledger) — defined in §3 What MacroCOSM gives every MiniCOSM
MacroCOSM
the whole language: the shared grammar every MiniCOSM is written in — defined in §2 Three scales
MicroCOSM
one organization's extension on top of a MiniCOSM — defined in §2 Three scales
MiniCOSM
an OES for one domain, declared by a manifest — defined in §2 Three scales
Open questions
a value nobody has given yet — defined in §3 What MacroCOSM gives every MiniCOSM
Paths, and a URI form
every part, module, kind, item and field has an address that respells its id… — defined in §3 What MacroCOSM gives every MiniCOSM
Renderers
anything that turns a volume into another form — defined in §3 What MacroCOSM gives every MiniCOSM
Saved and signed versions
an immutable copy of the files at a moment, with a manifest of hashes — defined in §3 What MacroCOSM gives every MiniCOSM
The envelope
the columns every item has: id, kind, name, summary, status, visibility, provenance — defined in §3 What MacroCOSM gives every MiniCOSM
The manifest
the machine-readable declaration of a MiniCOSM, one .cosm file — defined in §3 What MacroCOSM gives every MiniCOSM
The private/public split
two formats, not one with a setting: the complete private description — defined in §3 What MacroCOSM gives every MiniCOSM