principle-define-the-termslisted

# Define the Terms Prose is the weakest rung (the **encode-lessons-in-structure** principle skill). When you have to use it anyway, every term in it means one thing, and the glossary says which. **Why:** The glossary is the shared-understanding contract between the human and the agent, not just a consistency tool; the **align-on-intent** principle skill owns the intent half of that contract. An agent cannot ask what you meant. It picks the reading it already believed and acts on it, and you find out one diff later. Ambiguity hides in the words that sound most harmless, because a word everybody uses is a word nobody has defined. `tool`, `config`, `context`, `mode`, `workflow`, `service`, `handler`, `plugin`, `component`: each of these means four things, and a rule written with one of them is four rules. **Pattern:** 1. Before writing a rule about a concept, name the concept in one word. 2. Put it in the repo glossary (`CONTEXT.md`) with a one-line definition and an **Avoid** list of the synonyms it displaces. 3. Use that word everywhere it applies. Never cycle synonyms for variety; the unslop skill bans that as a style tell, and here it is a correctness problem. 4. A word already meaning two things in this repo gets split into two words. Both keep their own entry. Adding a qualifier to one use and leaving the other bare does not fix it, because the bare one still reads as either. **The banned synonym is the half a mechanism can hold.** A definition tells a careful reader