Documentation · Practice
Genetics as a model, not a verdict
The first rule: use genetics as an information-system model, never as a metaphor for human worth. Use lineage, variant, capability, fitness under environment X. Never bloodline, purity, dominant, superior genes.
Why this page exists
Words like fitness, selection, purity and superior genes carry historical and social weight far beyond software. Eugenics is a discredited ideology associated with scientific racism, colonialism and ableism, and its vocabulary is not available for reuse just because the objects here are repositories.
The metaphor earns its place by making lineage legible. It loses that place the moment it starts ranking things as intrinsically better or worse.
Mandated vocabulary
This table is a rule, not a suggestion. Copy on this site, in the protocol, and in any paper that cites the protocol is expected to stay on the right-hand column.
| Do not use | Use instead |
|---|---|
| Bloodline | Lineage |
| Dominant / recessive | Variant / allele |
| Superior / inferior gene | Capability |
| Fitness score, breeding, selection pressure | Fitness under environment X |
| Purity | Contribution share |
| Dominant | Most adopted |
| Breeding / selection pressure | Adoption policy |
Fitness is never one number
There is no scientifically meaningful software equivalent of a universally stronger gene. A change that lowers latency may cost memory. One that improves accessibility may add bundle size. An enterprise security policy may reject behaviour that is ideal for a hobbyist.
Fitness is therefore stored and displayed as a vector across 6 axes, measured in a stated environment. Any aggregate is a policy-specific view, never the canonical truth.
| Axis | Name | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| C | Correctness | Test and assertion evidence that behaviour is right. |
| S | Security | Scanner, advisory and policy outcomes. |
| P | Performance | Measured latency, throughput and resource cost. |
| K | Compatibility | Whether relatives can adopt this without breaking. |
| M | Maintainability | Complexity, coupling and review burden. |
| U | User outcome | Measured effect on the people using the software. |
Compatibility is not permission
An ancestry record must never imply that technical compatibility equals legal permission. Horizontal capability transfer in software means copying or adapting protected work. Every inherited gene carries license metadata, attribution and an explicit inheritance decision.
An unknown license means unknown — not “probably reusable”.
Authorship
Human authorship, AI-assisted operation, source material and subsequent human review are recorded separately. An agent is never automatically declared a copyright owner, and prompting a system does not by itself establish authorship in generated material.
Accessibility of the metaphor
Colour is never the only encoding for inherited, mutated, inferred, quarantined or verified. Every state pairs colour with a glyph, a pattern and a text label, and every visualisation has a keyboard-navigable, screen-readable equivalent.