stnd.buildSTANDARD MANUAL2026-09-20

Introduction

One standard, five norms — what must be true of a note, a page, and an image, regardless of how it's built.

Introduction

This section is the Standard’s own constitution — the rules that make a
note, a page, or an image conform, independent of whatever tool wrote it.
Five books, one per content type:

Book Governs
Standard::Vault How files are named, described, and journaled
Standard::Markdown The text flavor — what markup exists
Standard::Syntax How that markup typesets — the :: machine
Standard::Design Proportion, color, and type — the visual system
Standard::Photo How images are archived and processed

What must be true, never how it’s implemented

Every book here answers what must be true — a norm, not a recipe. A note
that follows Standard::Vault’s naming rule is conformant whether it was
written in Obsidian, a terminal, or by an AI agent. How the framework
enforces a norm — the vault loader, the press, the CSS engine — is
documented in System instead. Confusing the two is the
fastest way to end up with a norm that only holds because one particular
tool happens to behave a certain way today.

Reading order

Vault and Markdown first — every note touches both, every time it’s
written. Syntax and Design follow, for when a page needs more than plain
prose. Photo is last: it governs one specific medium, not general writing.