Chalk Allium Voice — Writing .allium Specs

Interpret MUST, MUST NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, MAY, etc. per RFC 2119.

Load chalk:voice for the universal principles and chalk:mindmap for the shape of anything the reader has to follow.

allium:tend governs what belongs in a spec and allium check validates its syntax.

A spec states the aim. What it does not state, it excludes.

Absence is assertion. A spec that never names a follower has already said there isn't one. Naming a thing in order to deny it creates the thing the denial was avoiding — and it dates the spec to the moment someone was arguing about it.

So a spec MUST NOT be defined by contrast with a design it does not contain.

• An obligation MUST NOT be named after what it is not. XNotY names two things and obliges one. Name the one: what the system does.