The 2024 framing was: hand-design eight primitives and 41 classes. The 2026 framing is: hand-design the kernel of eight; let extensions grow per case. Here is why both moves matter, and why the second one is the harder bet.
The 2024 framing was: hand-design eight primitives and 41 typed classes, ship them as a single closed schema, and call it the conflict ontology. That move was right at the time. It made disputes typable. It made commitments distinct from claims. It made positions distinct from interests. It is the reason every TACITUS product reads and writes the same graph.
The 2026 framing is harder. Hand-design the kernel of eight. Let everything below the kernel grow per case. A Commitment in HR mediation should not have the same shape as a Commitment in a peace process; pretending otherwise is the failure mode of every closed-ontology project that came before us. The kernel constrains. The extensions specialize. The provenance log records what each case taught the system. The forkable contract keeps it honest.
This is the harder bet because it asks the system to do something fixed ontologies do not have to: validate every per-case extension against the kernel before admitting it, and surface the extension to the practitioner who is going to use it. A schema-free graph dodges that work and pays for it later, in incoherence. A fixed ontology dodges that work and pays for it earlier, in domain incompatibility. We think the kernel-with-extensions move is what the field is converging on. The white paper at /research/vision lays out the formal argument.
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