Style guide — inventory

An inventory is a timestamped count of what exists, what state it is in, and what type it is. It is not a plan and not a log.

An inventory (PROSE genre) is a point-in-time enumeration of items in a defined scope, organised to support classification and action. It differs from a registry (which is authoritative and updated continuously) and from a brief (which carries analysis and recommendation). An inventory is read; a registry is queried. For the citation discipline that governs how inventories reference other documents, see the citation substrate. This article is the human-facing standard; the machine-readable counterpart lives in service-disclosure/templates/inventory.toml.

[edit]When to use this template

Use an inventory when:

• A count is needed to understand the size of a migration, cleanup, or audit task.
• Items need to be classified and the classification itself is the deliverable.
• A snapshot is required before a structural change so the before-state is recorded.

Do not use an inventory as a living document. Inventories are snapshots — they carry a date, go stale, and are superseded by a new inventory when the scope changes materially. A living record belongs in a registry or a cleanup log.

[edit]Structure

The template requires three sections:

Section	Purpose
Opening	One paragraph: what scope was inventoried, as of what date, and what the count reveals at high level.
Inventory table	The enumeration. Columns: Item (canonical name), State (closed enum), Type (closed enum), Notes (short, max one clause).
Summary	Counts by state and type. Totals. May include a "next action" pointer if the inventory is the input to a migration or audit.

An optional Classification vocabulary section follows the table when the State and Type enumerations are not self-evident. Define each value in one phrase.

[edit]Inventory table discipline

• One row per item. No merged cells.
• State values come from a closed enum per domain (for example, open | closed | deferred for cleanup items; active | dormant | archived for projects).
• Type values come from the relevant taxonomy (Nomenclature Matrix entity types, genre families, etc.).
• Notes column: one clause maximum. If more than one clause is needed, the item requires its own entry in the cleanup log or brief.

[edit]Register and tone

Factual. No interpretation in the table — the rows are observations, not recommendations. The opening paragraph may describe what the pattern suggests; the table itself does not.

Dates are ISO 8601. Canonical names from the Nomenclature Matrix throughout. No prose in the table beyond the Notes column.

[edit]See also

• Style Guide — README
• Style Guide — Memo
• Language Protocol Substrate