STE-Code STANDARD v1.0.0

STE-Code STANDARD v1.0.0

Tag, commit, and scope

This note describes only the standard wording in the first release of
STE-Code: the ASD-STE100 Issue 9 adaptation to code documentation, its
controlled vocabulary, the deployable level prompts, and the FLAVOR linguistic
layer. Repository infrastructure (the .agents/ Hermes toolchain, the benchmark
harness, quality sweeps) is covered by the parallel REPOSITORY-v1.0.0 release,
not here.

Every measurement was taken at the release tag commit 7e20b0d
(STANDARD-1.0.0), not at any later HEAD. Post-tag commits are out of
scope. (The full first release bundles additional content at 0cf59e4; see
REPOSITORY-v1.0.0 for that whole-repository story.)

Item	Value
Standard tag	STANDARD-1.0.0 = 7e20b0d
Source standard	ASD-STE100 Issue 9 (January 2025, ASD Europe)
Companion repository tag	REPOSITORY-v1.0.0 = 0cf59e4
Companion flavor tag	FLAVOR-1.0.0

Tag family. STANDARD-* releases cover only the standard wording.
REPOSITORY-* releases cover the whole repository. This note deliberately does
not describe .agents/, the benchmark, or tooling.

Headline stats (standard wording, at 7e20b0d)

Metric	Value
Adapted rule units	55 (51 writing rules + 4 grammar recommendations)
Code-domain categories	22
Dictionary entries adapted	560 (from ~2,149 source ASD-STE100 words)
Level system prompts	4 assembled (~1.2K–45K tokens) + level-5 full specification (~100K)
FLAVOR checking layers	12 specified, 5 enforced by reference linter
FLAVOR workflows	17

This is a standard release

There is no prior standard to correct, deprecate, or supersede — this is the
first one. STANDARD-1.0.0 ships the STE-Code adaptation of ASD-STE100 Issue
9 tailored to code documentation, plus the companion FLAVOR-1.0.0 linguistic
layer. The framing is "here is what we built and how we know it is true," not
"here is what changed."

The central theme: a faithful, auditable adaptation

The whole point of v1.0.0 is that a published industry standard — ASD-STE100
Issue 9 — was adapted, rule by rule, for code documentation. The theme is
fidelity with evidence: each rule, category, and dictionary entry traces
back to its source, and each claim can be checked against the tree at
7e20b0d.

The adaptation produced:

• 51 writing rules drawn from ASD-STE100's sections 1–9, reshaped for
  code-domain use (comments, error messages, config files, identifiers).
• 4 grammar recommendations (the "GR" units) carried as guidance.
• 22 code-domain categories — the controlled vocabulary organized into 22
  noun categories from the source standard's part-of-speech taxonomy.
• A controlled dictionary of 560 adapted entries, sampled and reshaped from
  roughly 2,149 source ASD-STE-Code words.
• 5 deployable writing depths — 4 assembled level system prompts plus a
  level-5 full specification — so the same standard applies from a tight inline
  comment up to specification-grade documentation.
• A linguistic FLAVOR layer that extends the base standard with semantic and
  epistemic checks.

What the standard contains

Using the corrected counts verified at 7e20b0d:

• 55 adapted rule units — 51 writing rules + 4 grammar recommendations.
  (Trajectory note: rules 2.3, 6.6, and 8.7 were added after v1.0.0, in
  the v1.1.0 line, bringing that release to 54 + 4 = 58 units. So the standard
  is 55 at first release, 58 by v1.1.0 — counts are not portable across
  releases; measure each tag directly.)
• 22 categories — verified by counting ## Category headings in
  a-categories.md (Category 1 "Official Parts Information" … Category 22
  "Animals, Plants, and Other Life Forms").
• 560 adapted dictionary entries — counted from ## WORD (pos) headings;
  452 approved and 108 marked UNNAPROVED (a persistent source-file typo).
  Adapted from ~2,149 source ASD-STE100 words (the source dictionary's
  approved + unapproved counts). The dictionary does not contain 2,149
  entries — that figure describes the source surveyed, not what was adapted.
• 4 assembled level system prompts plus a level-5 specification:
  • Level 1 — level1/system-prompt.txt, 4,473 bytes (~1.2K tokens)
  • Level 2 — level2/system-prompt.txt, 17,884 bytes (~4.5K tokens)
  • Level 3 — level3/system-prompt.txt, 31,160 bytes (~8K tokens)
  • Level 4 — level4/system-prompt.txt, 126,528 bytes (~45K tokens)
  • Level 5 — a full specification (~100K tokens) delivered as 51 per-rule
    summary.md directories rather than a single assembled prompt file; a
    standalone ste-code-level5-max.txt (228,903 bytes) also exists.

The FLAVOR linguistic layer

FLAVOR-1.0.0 adds a linguistic extension on top of the base standard. The
layer stack in FLAVOR.md specifies 12 checking layers:

1. Epistemic Marking
2. Actor Model
3. Single Referent Rule
4. Semantic Roles
5. Verb Frames
6. Negation Control
7. Scope Bracketing
8. Discourse / Anaphora
9. Quantifier Table
10. Register Profiles
11. Lifecycle States
12. Definition Discipline

Be precise about enforcement. The reference linter, ste_code_lint.py,
implements 5 of the 12 layers: semantic_roles, single_referent,
epistemic, quantifiers, and register. The remaining 7 are specified but
not yet enforced by the shipped tool.

Be precise about documentation, too. Layers 6 (Negation Control), 7 (Scope
Bracketing), 8 (Discourse / Anaphora), and 12 (Definition Discipline) point
their spec anchors at a SPECIFICATION.md that does not exist — not at the
tag, and not at HEAD. So 4 of the 12 advertised layers have no backing
specification document, in addition to not being linted. This is a live repo
inconsistency (see below), not a claim of this note.

Known standard-internal inconsistencies

These are inconsistencies inside the v1.0.0 standard/flavor files themselves
— not errors in this release note, but a reader who opens the repo will hit
them, so they are stated here:

• artifacts/README.md says 19 categories; the standard has 22. The actual
  a-categories.md has 22, and ste-code/README.md agrees. The artifacts
  README is stale at the tag. (This note's "22" is correct.)
• ste-code/README.md says "53 rules" in its quality block, while the same
  file's Stage 4 box says "51 rules + 4 GR." 53 matches neither 51 nor 55. Do
  not propagate the 53.
• artifacts/sweep-report.md is referenced but missing. git cat-file at
  the tag confirms it does not exist.
• SPECIFICATION.md is missing at the tag and at HEAD. Four FLAVOR layers
  (6, 7, 8, 12) anchor their specs there, so those layers have no backing spec
  document.
• The reference linter enforces 5 of 12 FLAVOR layers (see above). The other
  7 are specified but not enforced.

Contradictions in the original published note (corrected here)

The original published v1.0.0 note was a flat, marketing-style draft. Where it
stated a number the verified tree contradicts, this note uses the verified
value. Each correction is RESOLVED in these notes:

#	Original claim	Verified correction	Status
1	"2,149 dictionary entries"	560 adapted entries from ~2,149 source ASD-STE100 words	RESOLVED
2	"18 workflows"	17 workflows (WORKFLOWS.md)	RESOLVED
3	"5 level system prompts (1.2K–45K)"	4 assembled prompts (~1.2K–45K) + level-5 full specification (~100K)	RESOLVED
4	implied 55 rules stable	55 at first release, 58 by v1.1.0 (rules 2.3, 6.6, 8.7 added later)	RESOLVED

Note that "55 adapted rules" in the original was correct for v1.0.0 — the
error was only in the dictionary count, the workflow count, and the level-prompt
count.

Version boundary

• STANDARD-1.0.0 (7e20b0d) is the first standard wording release.
• The next standard increment is STANDARD-v1.1.0, which adds rules 2.3,
  6.6, and 8.7 (bringing the count to 54 + 4 = 58 units). When reading later
  standard notes, remember that "54 rules" describes v1.1.0 onward, not the
  v1.0.0 first release.
• The whole-repository story for this release lives in REPOSITORY-v1.0.0.

---

Adapted from ASD-STE100 Issue 9 (January 2025), ASD Europe. All counts
verified at tag 7e20b0d; post-tag commits are out of scope. See
ste-code/README.md for full Credits & References.