# Corpus Recompilation **Domain:** Knowledge Architecture / Editorial Systems / Ontology Governance **Doc Type:** Canonical Operational Concept Node **Maturity:** Evolving **Authority:** Corpus-specific operational metaphor ## Definition **Corpus recompilation** is the controlled review of existing documents after a canonical concept, distinction or relationship changes. It asks which passages depend on the revised ontology, whether they still conform and whether they should be corrected, qualified, relinked or preserved as historically situated disagreement. The term is an analogy to recompiling software against a changed type system or schema. It does not imply that prose can or should be rewritten mechanically. ## Trigger Conditions Recompilation may be warranted when: - a foundational definition changes; - one concept is split into several distinct nodes; - formerly separate concepts are merged; - a relationship is reclassified or reversed; - a new evidence standard changes the status of repeated claims; - accumulated article conflicts reveal systematic overreach. Ordinary additions to a peripheral node do not require a corpus-wide pass. ## Review Sequence 1. Record the ontological change and its reason. 2. Identify direct links, aliases and unlinked textual usages. 3. Classify affected passages as conforming, extending, conflicting or historically situated. 4. Review high-consequence claims before mechanical link or wording changes. 5. Preserve provenance and meaningful disagreement. 6. Validate links and record unresolved cases. ## Present Status The current vault is still predominantly in an ontology-learning and integration phase. Corpus recompilation therefore names a future tightening process, not a standing instruction to normalize every article against definitions that may still be evolving. When the ontology is sufficiently settled, recompilation can help correct article overreach while retaining the possibility that a recurring conflict is evidence for changing the ontology instead. ## Key Insight **A definition has not fully changed at corpus scale until its downstream consequences have been examined.** ## Sources / Provenance - Derived from the software-compilation analogy developed in [[journal/2026-08-15 - Bidirectional Ontology and Semantic Elasticity|2026-08-15 — Bidirectional Ontology and Semantic Elasticity]]. - This is a corpus-specific operational term rather than a claim of standardized ontology-engineering nomenclature. ## See Also [[wiki/Bidirectional Ontology|Bidirectional Ontology]], [[wiki/Ontology Evolution|Ontology Evolution]], [[wiki/Semantic Governance|Semantic Governance]], [[wiki/Semantic Elasticity|Semantic Elasticity]], [[wiki/Semantic Drift|Semantic Drift]], [[wiki/Corpus Engineering|Corpus Engineering]], [[wiki/Provenance|Provenance]]