DC-KE Canonical Glossary

Definition

This page is the source of truth for terms used inside the Direct Create Knowledge Engine. Every DC-KE document, tool, skill, and AI session uses these terms only as defined here. The naming family is the language of research and scholarship, so the names explain each other. Call the apple an apple and the orange an orange, always.

Before drafting on any Culture Stack topic, the dc-ke:draft skill (at ~/Dropbox/07 DC Projects/00 DC Projects Automation/dc-ke-plugin/skills/draft/SKILL.md) and any AI session loads this glossary first, then loads the Culture Stack definition. The glossary fixes the vocabulary; the definition fixes the model.

A. Discipline and bodies of work, fixed brand nouns

• Cultural Intelligence, the discipline Direct Create practices and founds: the applied reading of place and culture to inform design.
• Culture Codex, Direct Create’s published body of knowledge.
• Culture Code, the analytical framework for decoding how culture, craft, and artifacts carry meaning. Culture Code reads and decodes; it is descriptive.
• Culture Stack, the end product: a place-and-purpose cultural intelligence delivered as a Study a designer builds on. The made thing.
• Culture Stacking, the process that produces a Culture Stack, Section C below.
• Culture Stack Automator (CSA), the AI tool pipeline (CSR, IIP, CW, GD, CD) that assists Culture Stacking.

The boundary that matters most: Culture Code decodes existing culture, reading; Culture Stacking conducts a study to build new cultural intelligence for a project, making; the Culture Stack is the Study produced.

B. The material

• Field, a category in the universal cultural taxonomy: the tangible fields (geographic, living, immovable, movable) and the intangible fields (languages, performing arts, oral traditions, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and skill, cuisine). Fields are universal and unordered. They are the areas a study can investigate. Scoping note: a “field” is a cultural category; “fieldwork” is the activity of gathering evidence. Two senses, kept distinct.
• Finding, a Field investigated in one specific place and grounded in that place’s evidence. Findings are local. They are what the study carries and connects. Fields are the areas; findings are the place-specific results.
• Evidence (Sources), the sourced facts a finding rests on. When carried inside a delivered exhibit, it is the exhibit’s evidence anchor.
• Emphasis, the relative weight a finding is given for the project’s purpose. Emphasis is set during Argument and reused by tools to represent or re-read a finished study. It is a structuring and representation measure. It is not the build, and it is not a formula.

C. The process: Culture Stacking and its stages

Culture Stacking is the study that produces a Culture Stack. Its five stages:

1. Scoping, scope the study to the project’s context: its purpose, end use, audience, constraints. Scoping sets the governing question.
2. Fieldwork, gather the cultural evidence across the fields.
3. Mapping, clean the evidence, derive the findings, and map how the findings of this place relate. This builds the web.
4. Argument, draw the connections and build the findings into a narrative argument, setting emphasis for the project’s purpose.
5. Edition, compose the argument into the delivered study: chapters and exhibits, the place’s edition.

One line: scope the study, do the fieldwork across the fields, map the findings, build the argument with emphasis, and produce the edition, a Study of chapters and exhibits.

The interpretation work after delivery is the Commentary, Section E. It is continuous support, not a build stage.

D. The deliverable: the Culture Stack as a Study

• Study, the delivered form of a Culture Stack. It reads as a story, with a narrative arc. The Study is the deck.
• Chapter, a section of the Study, chosen for the project’s needs, with findings visible inside it. A chapter is a section of the deck.
• Exhibit, a single slide-ready unit within a chapter. An exhibit is a slide.
• Exhibit parts, the fixed shape of an exhibit: Title, Narrative, Evidence anchor, Open meaning, Findings, Visual intention.
• Complete evidence, open meaning, the rule for every exhibit: the facts are closed and sourced; the design implications are left open for the reader to draw.

E. Use and support

• Reading / Interpretation, how a designer uses a Study: a situated reading they form from their own training and experience, create from, and return to in order to reconfirm.
• Commentary, Direct Create’s accumulating body of interpretation around the studies: helping creatives read a Study when they are unclear, when a new situation appears, or when readings conflict. The Commentary begins as a service and grows into an assistant.
• Annotation, a single captured interpretation: the situation, the part of the Study in question, the reading offered, and how it resolved. Annotations compound into principles.

F. Governing laws

• Non-determinism, outputs are weighted by Emphasis and plural. The engine offers readings and resolutions, never one verdict.
• Substrate, not solver, the Study informs a human author and is interpreted by them. It never authors the design in their place.

G. Naming map, plain concept to canonical term

How to edit the glossary

The glossary is the source of truth. To introduce or change a term, edit this page first, then propagate to the Culture Stack definition, the method page, the commentary page, and the DC-KE synthesis page. Never let two files disagree on a term. The authoring home of the canon sits in Dropbox at 00 DC Projects Automation/Culture Stack Canon/, and the cascade flows from there into this wiki.

Cross-references

• The Culture Stack
• Culture Stacking, the method
• Commentary and Interpretation
• Culture Code
• Cultural Intelligence
• The Culture Stack inside DC-KE