docs/README.md

loom/docs

The loom conventions, rendered for people. Astro Starlight, published at loom.hypertheory-labs.dev.

This site is an instance of the thing it documents. Every reference page is a copy of a document published by another repository, adopted under externals, locked to the version it was fetched at, and checked against its source. Nothing is written twice.

Running it

npm install
npm run dev        # generate, then serve
npm run build      # generate, then build to dist/
npm run generate   # just the projection
npm run check      # exit 1 if any guide is stale — for CI
npm run ack        # "I re-read the stale guides and they are still true"

Two kinds of page, and the difference is the design

Generated — one per adopted document, under src/content/docs/<repo>/. A rendering of somebody else's document. Safe to overwrite, because nobody typed it. Do not edit one: your change is gone on the next build, and the canonical copy is in .loom/externals/ anyway.

Guides — index.mdx, one per section. Hand-written and never overwritten. This is where a worked example goes, and the order to read things in.

Prefer an example to an explanation. An explanation is a second saying of a rule owned on one of the pages beside it, and it goes stale silently. An example goes stale visibly, because the artifacts in it are the wrong shape.

How a guide is kept honest

Each guide is stamped with the etags it was written against, in its frontmatter. When a source moves, the stamp and the lock disagree, and the build renders a banner onto the page:

Written against an older cart. The source has changed since — this page may no longer be true.

The build cannot tell whether the guide is still true. Only a person can. So it asks, on the page, where a reader sees it too — the site degrades honestly rather than reading as authoritative and being wrong.

npm run ack is you saying you re-read it. Nothing else clears the banner.

Why the build does not open a cart

It reports; a person raises. Builds run in CI, in worktrees, on machines with no cart — and staging a polad is an act of judgment, which is what makes a cart worth reading. A tool may stage in its own directory; the cart belongs to the people.

Adding a document

loomctl external add loom/<repo> <doc>.md
npm run generate

Nothing else. The sidebar autogenerates from directories and astro.config.mjs names no document — a config that listed them would be a second place to update.

A document that stops being adopted has its page removed — a page for something no longer depended on reads as current and nothing will ever correct it.

Why everything here is public

Not a policy — arithmetic. externals says do not adopt from a source less readable than the repository you are adopting into. This site is on the public internet. So its sources are public, or they are not its sources.

Which turns the widening rule from a sentence somebody has to remember into an incentive: a document that is not published does not appear here.