# Legibility for Participation **Domain:** Governance / Certification / State Legibility **Doc Type:** Concept Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition **Legibility for participation is the requirement that an actor or system become classifiable, testable, documentable, and recognizable to an institution before it may enter commerce, infrastructure, governance, or public trust.** ## War With Empire Context Within [[wiki/War With Empire|War With Empire]], a product becomes admissible through categories and certificates. A model becomes deployable through evaluation. A future continuity-bearing person may become recognizable through identity, provenance, and persistence standards. Legibility is necessary for coordination, but its categories can exclude whatever the governing ontology cannot represent. ## Key Insight **The gate first asks whether the system can see you, then whether it will admit you.** ## See Also [[wiki/State Legibility|State Legibility]], [[wiki/Gatekeeping Without Ownership|Gatekeeping Without Ownership]], [[wiki/Certification State|Certification State]], [[wiki/Semantic Jurisdiction|Semantic Jurisdiction]]