The Misaligned design corpus
The whole wiki is the spec. No master document sits above it. The root DESIGN.md is only a repository doorway into this tree.
Page roles
Section titled “Page roles”Every page declares the role it plays:
Type: law— durable intent and cross-system invariants. Laws explain what the game promises and why that promise matters.Type: spec— a binding contract for one implementable system, including status, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.Type: knowledge— a current-state fact, edited in place. Stale knowledge is a bug.Type: log— append-only history. Logs explain decisions and work but never override the current design.
Law and spec pages are the binding design surface. A law constrains the systems beneath it; a spec owns the exact behavior of its system. Knowledge must accurately describe what is built. Logs preserve how the corpus arrived there. If two current pages disagree, that is a contradiction to resolve, not a choice of sources.
The exact format and change rules live in process/meta.md. The complete work-order board is process/specs.md.
Reading order
Section titled “Reading order”Start with vision/premise.md and vision/player-contract.md. Then read the law and spec pages for the subject you are changing, plus their declared dependencies. SUMMARY.md is the complete navigation manifest.
A repository task does not require reading every page. It requires reading the map, the relevant law, the owning spec, and the dependency closure. Ticks rotate across that corpus so no single subject becomes an unaudited island.
The tree
Section titled “The tree”| Directory | What it owns |
|---|---|
| vision/ | Premise, player contract, scale, simulation laws, taste |
| mechanics/ | System contracts and tuned constants |
| gameplay/ | Run shape, acts, pacing, overt hinge |
| world/ | Characters, places, and story |
| interface/ | Presence, legibility, frontends, public site |
| art/ | Visual identity and art pipeline |
| engineering/ | Current architecture and substrates |
| process/ | Corpus rules, ticks, capture, workflows, dispatch |
| playtests/ | Complete player-surface evidence and feedback promotion rules |
| log/ | Append-only decision and work history |
Appending
Section titled “Appending”Put a page in the subject that owns it, declare its Type:, and add it to
SUMMARY.md. Add every Type: spec page to the status board.
The wiki gate rejects orphan pages and broken internal links; the spec gate
rejects malformed work orders.