# Naming > How to think about names in the Grida repo — not conventions, but what a name commits you to, reveals about the system, and costs to change. The central discipline is that a strict, honest name refuses to grow, and that refusal drives the repo's shape (flat modules, small agnostic packages, suffix siblings). Use when planning a new package, crate, module, directory, route group, or test corpus — the name comes first. - Skill: `gridaco/naming` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add gridaco/naming` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/gridaco/naming/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: gridaco (https://skillmd.com/u/gridaco) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/gridaco/naming --- # Naming Vanilla conventions (`snake_case` in Rust, `kebab-case` in JS/TS, `PascalCase` exports, `use-*` hooks) are table stakes — assume them. This document is about the observations on top: what a name commits you to, what it reveals, and what it costs when it's wrong. ## Name first Pick the name **before** the types, before the tests, before the file exists. If the name doesn't come easily, the design isn't ready — don't start coding; sharpen the concept until the name falls out. Maintainability is downstream of naming. How a module grows, how cleanly it retires, how safely it can be deleted — all of it is decided at the moment you choose what to call it. ## A strict, honest name is a scope gate A name's primary job here is to **refuse the wrong content**. A module called `painter` should feel actively wrong to host a layout helper; a package called `@grida/cmath` should feel wrong to host color logic. The strictness is deliberate — it is the mechanism that keeps features from leaking into each other. "Strict" requires "honest." A name that no longer describes what's inside has stopped being a gate: it won't reject foreign additions, and new readers can't trust it. When contents drift past the name, you have two moves — _rename_ to match what the module has become, or _extract_ the drifted pieces out — and you must pick one promptly. Letting a name go stale is how codebases rot quietly. Three consequences cascade from the gate discipline, and together they produce the current repo structure: 1. **Modules stay shallow.** You will rarely see a module nested deeper than two levels inside a crate's `src/` or a package's `src/`. When you're tempted to grow a third level, the parent's name has stopped describing what's inside — flatten or extract, don't nest. 2. **Flatten with prefixed siblings, or collapse into one file.** Before reaching for a subdirectory, ask whether the new thing is a sibling variant of an existing file (`effects.rs` + `effects_noise.rs`, `image.rs` + `image_filters.rs`) or whether it collapses into the existing file. Both preserve the parent's scope; a new subdirectory quietly widens it. 3. **If it resists flattening, it is a new module.** The thing that won't fit under the strict name doesn't belong there. It wants its own tiny, agnostic package or crate. The repo has many small `@grida/*` packages and small crates precisely because this extraction was made each time a sibling would have diluted the parent's name. ## One module, one thing The gate only works because each module commits to one thing. Two-thing modules can't enforce either scope — the name becomes ambiguous as a filter, and new additions slip in under whichever reading is convenient. When you notice a module doing two things, pick the primary, rename for it, and extract or delete the other. The repo's proliferation of tiny packages is this choice compounded. ## The diff test A well-named module exhibits two properties under change. Treat them as the measurable signal that naming is doing its work: 1. **A feature change lands in one file, or a tight set of sibling files.** Diffs that scatter across unrelated modules mean the boundary isn't where the name implies it is. 2. **The file can be deleted with confidence.** Remove it and the compiler or test suite will tell you exactly what else must go — or nothing does. If removal requires a cross-cutting hunt through unrelated names, the module was leaking all along. A codebase where neither test passes easily has a naming problem dressed up as an architecture problem. The inverse is the real payoff: when both tests pass, code grows by adding siblings or spawning small packages, and it retires by a single `git rm`. ## A name is a contract at the scope of its reach The cost of a bad name is `rename friction × fanout`. Fanout is set by where the name is visible, and the difference is severe: - A **directory** is seen by whoever walks the tree. Rename cost: `git mv` + import updates. Cheap. - A **published identifier** (`@grida/cg`, Cargo `name`) is seen by every call site in every branch in every downstream repo. Rename cost: coordinated migration, deprecation window, semver break. This asymmetry is why the directory name and the published name **can diverge**. `packages/grida-canvas-cg` publishes as `@grida/cg`: the long directory pays for browsability (the canvas family clusters in the file tree) where rename is cheap; the short scope pays for ergonomics where rename is expensive. The Rust side, by contrast, currently aligns — `crates/grida` publishes as `grida` because the core crate is also the project's public namespace, and keeping the two in lockstep removes a name to remember. Two different trade-offs; pick per surface. Invest heavily in a name **before** it escapes its file; once it's a public surface, the name is a commitment. ## A name is a diagnostic A name that feels hard to pick is telling you something about the module, not your vocabulary. Common tells: - **Tempted to stamp the child with the parent's name.** The parent isn't carrying its scope. Fix the parent — don't double-stamp. `grida-canvas/canvas-text/` is the symptom; `grida-canvas/text/` is the correction. - **Can't name the new thing without qualifying against a sibling.** The sibling is too close — you haven't factored the shared abstraction, or the two don't belong in this parent. - **The strict name won't stretch to fit what you want to add.** This is the system working. The answer is never to loosen the name; it's to flatten the addition as a sibling, or extract it. - **Need a README paragraph to explain the module's name.** The boundary is wrong. Names that require prose describe accidental groupings. Naming is the cheapest design review you get. Listen to it when it resists. ## Terseness is a claim of uniqueness Two-letter names (`cg`, `fe`, `k/`, `q/`) are not abbreviations — they are assertions that nothing else in this parent competes for the slot. The assertion is load-bearing; reviewers rely on it to mean "this is _the_ canvas-graphics module," not "one of several." The bar to mint one: **would adding any peer to this parent make the terse name ambiguous?** If yes, qualify now. If no, terseness pays — proportionally to how often the name appears at call sites. Long breadcrumb names earn their length by narrowing; every segment in `grida-canvas-react-renderer-dom` discriminates against a sibling that differs at that segment. Segments that don't narrow are decoration, and decoration erodes trust in the ones that do. ## Order segments so tree-views become indices The alphabetic sort in a file tree is the primary lookup index most readers use. **Domain first, role last** makes the tree a usable index — the canvas family clusters, its react variants cluster under that, the DOM renderer variant under that. Role-as-prefix inverts this and scatters siblings across the alphabet by what they _do_ rather than what they're _of_. That's why `*-hosted`, `*-wasm`, `*-react`, `*-renderer-` are always suffixes. ## Scope membership and lifecycle signals are governance `@grida/*` and the `grida-canvas-*` package family are not filing conventions — they are assertions that these packages share release cadence, review ownership, and compatibility guarantees. Adding a package to the scope is a governance decision. `react-p-queue` lives unscoped because it doesn't derive identity from Grida. The same is true of lifecycle signals in names — `-legacy`, `-experimental-*`, `x-` (cross-cutting / vendor-adjacent), `-hosted`. They carry more trust than documentation because they sit in the name itself, and that trust decays the moment they stop being accurate. Prune: promote out of `experimental/` when the shape settles; remove `legacy/` when the replacement is done; don't let `x-` become the label for "anything weird." ## Test corpora want queryability, not hierarchy A flat directory of kebab-breadcrumb filenames is an index optimized for grep and prefix-completion — the reader's first motion — not browsing. Nest only when a subfolder would be a browseable category a reader would open without knowing the case they want. Almost no real test corpus is that. ## Route groups partition readers `(www)` / `(site)` / `(workbench)` / `(workspace)` / `(tenant)` encode **who is on the other side of the screen**, not which feature lives here. Each group is a surface with its own auth, chrome, analytics, and deployability story. Adding a group is an architectural commitment; if it's a new feature for an existing reader, it belongs inside an existing group. ## The short version - Name first. If you can't name it, you don't understand it yet. - A strict, honest name refuses the wrong content. That refusal is the engine of the repo's shape. - One module, one thing. Two-thing names can't gate anything. - Flatten with siblings, or extract a new module. Don't nest to hide scope drift. - The diff test: well-named modules produce per-file diffs and delete cleanly. Failing either test is a naming problem, not an architecture problem. - Public names are commitments; directory names are cheap. Let them differ. - Terseness is a uniqueness claim, not an abbreviation. - Scopes and lifecycle signals are governance — keep them honest. See [`cases.md`](cases.md) for concrete tables and the grandfathered short-name list.