Vocabulary

NLPM Domain Vocabulary

The canonical noun-and-verb set NLPM uses to name what it does. Every artifact name, command name, agent name, rule wording, and prose description should draw from this registry. Synonyms are flagged by /nlpm:check and penalized by /nlpm:score.

Sister skill: nlpm:conventions holds upstream Claude Code framework terms (hook events, frontmatter fields, manifest keys). This skill holds NLPM-internal domain language. If a term is from Anthropic's docs, it belongs in conventions. If it is from NLPM's own corpus, it belongs here.

How this registry is built

Every term listed below has literary warrant — it appears in at least one NLPM artifact today, captured by analysis/scripts/extract-vocabulary.py. Re-run that script after adding or renaming artifacts; the freshest output lives at analysis/vocabulary-extract/summary.md. New terms enter the registry only after one of the four warrant types from analysis/vocabulary-design-principles.md (P6) is satisfied — literary warrant alone is the entry bar for terms already in use; new coinages need user, structural, or domain warrant.

Two scopes (P1)

NLPM has two declared scopes. A homonym across them is a boundary, not a collision.

A verb that appears in both scopes (scan, test, discover) carries the same identity criterion in both — these are sanctioned homonyms. A verb that appears in only one scope (audit, contribute, track in auditor; score, check, fix, ls, trend, init in internal) is scope-bound; using it in the other scope requires either renaming or declaring a second scope-specific definition.

Verbs

Internal scope (NLPM commands)

Deprecated synonyms (do not use in internal scope):

• lint, validate → use check (structural) or score (quality)
• find, search, list → use ls
• analyze → use score (if quantitative) or pick a more specific verb
• audit → not in internal scope; live in auditor scope only

Auditor scope (.github/workflows/auditor-*.yml, auditor/scripts/)

Sibling-granularity note (P1): report is broader than its peers (classify, refine, cite, diff). The auditor's noun-named workflow convention absorbs this — workflows that produce reports are noun-named after the output (auditor-daily-report, auditor-rule-review), and the verb report is the generic act behind that family. Documented inconsistency, not a P1 violation; flagged here so future additions don't replicate the pattern without intent.

Cross-scope homonyms (same meaning in both scopes):

• scan — pattern-match against a signature database (used by security-scan command and scan-suppressions.py)
• test — pass/fail against named specs (used by /nlpm:test and auditor-integration-test.yml)
• discover — produce a candidate list (/nlpm:ls description text and auditor-discover.yml)

Verbs proposed but not entered

Per the precedence order in analysis/vocabulary-design-principles.md (P6 last; warrant is an entry check, not a veto), proposed terms split into two lists.

Deferred (P2–P5 satisfied; awaiting warrant):

Deferred terms are documented but not yet canonical. R51 does not flag them as deprecated — they are nameless gaps, not synonyms.

Rejected by higher principle (no entry possible regardless of warrant):

Nouns

Artifact-class nouns (rigid; survive state changes)

Sanctioned homonyms (distinct senses, not drift — the drift scanner should not cluster these against the canonical nouns above):

Everywhere else, component naming plugin pieces (command/agent/skill/hook) and issue naming a detected problem are drift: the canonical nouns are artifact and finding.

Implementation-role nouns (P2/P3 — agent names ride alongside command verbs)

These are not top-level verbs in their own right (P3). They are role-names for sub-step agents. Treat them as nouns naming the worker, not as operations on artifacts.

Output-class nouns (produced by verbs)

Auditor-scope nouns (only meaningful inside auditor/)

The bright-line table (P1, P5)

When the evaluation cluster overlaps in practice, use this table to disambiguate:

Two verbs share a scope and an identity criterion ⇒ one must be retired or scope-split. Two verbs share an identity criterion across scopes ⇒ that is a sanctioned homonym (declare it in this table).

How to extend this registry

1. Add a term only if it has warrant. The four warrant types come from analysis/vocabulary-design-principles.md P6: literary, user, structural, domain. Literary warrant is automatic via the extraction script — if the script picks the term up, it qualifies.
2. Re-run the extraction script. python3 analysis/scripts/extract-vocabulary.py writes analysis/vocabulary-extract/summary.md. New terms appear there.
3. Slot the term. Add a row to the right table above (internal verb / auditor verb / artifact-class noun / role-noun / output-class noun / auditor-scope noun).
4. Cite the file evidence. Every row has an "examples" or "file evidence" column. Cite at least one path.
5. If retiring a synonym, list it under its canonical verb's "deprecated synonyms" line. Do not silently drop terms; deprecation is itself a vocabulary act and needs to be visible.

Deferred work (documented, not yet executed)

Auditor workflow filename convention

.github/workflows/auditor-*.yml filenames follow a two-rule split, both sanctioned:

By P3, both patterns produce or gate, so both pass the top-level-verb test. The split is genuine: noun-named workflows are named after what they write, verb-named workflows after what they do.

Outlier: auditor-batch-processor.yml is named after a process role, not a verb or an output noun. Rename candidate: auditor-promote-batch. Deferred — git history, badge, and external references make the rename costly, and the existing name has literary warrant.

Scope note

This skill loads on requests to write, review, or name NLPM artifacts. For framework-level facts (hook event names, manifest field schemas, Claude Code naming conventions), see [[conventions]]. For the 50 quality rules (R01–R50), see [[rules]]. For penalty tables, see [[scoring]].