Cassowary World Lore

This repository is the documentation and canon foundation for the Cassowary World project.

It is organized as a layered causal knowledge base: real-world reference defines the baseline, divergences define what changes, lore explains what emerges, and stories demonstrate systems without defining canon.

Purpose

• Store canon and story foundation notes for the Cassowary World
• Preserve causal explanations for biological, ecological, technical, and institutional systems
• Make canon status and system dependencies easier to audit and maintain

Repository Structure

• principles/ - navigation for guiding philosophy and canon constraints
• docs/ - navigation for contributor-facing instructions and migration guides
• reference/ - real-world baseline and world-state documents
• lore/ - retrievable Cassowary World system docs and fundamental divergences
• stories/ - non-canon exploratory narrative material and spikes
• generated/ - committed deterministic indexes derived from the source docs
• Root *.md files - foundation documents, canon index, open questions, and stable project-level references
• README.md - repository overview
• AGENTS.md - operating instructions for human/AI contributors

Current Foundation Docs

• 03-history-and-timeline.md
• GUIDING_PRINCIPLES.md
• CORE_LOGIC.md
• CANON_INDEX.md
• 99-open-questions.md

Active Knowledge Layers

Active canon and canon candidates live in reference/, lore/divergences/, and lore/.

reference/ defines real-world baseline and world-state constraints. lore/divergences/ defines deliberate changes from real-world history or biology. lore/ defines the Cassowary World systems that emerge from those constraints and divergences.

Core Logic

CORE_LOGIC.md is the inference layer for repository consistency. It captures causal rules and dependency expectations (for example, preservation implies storage infrastructure; storage infrastructure implies ownership and institutional handling).

Lore documents should be checked against CORE_LOGIC.md to identify missing dependencies, contradictions, or required open questions.

Canon Promotion

Canon status progresses through documented review, not narrative assertion.

• Draft - exploratory, incomplete, or provisional
• Canon Candidate - mechanistically defined and plausibly integrated
• Canon - explicitly confirmed
• Deprecated - retained for traceability but no longer active canon

Active reference and lore systems should be tracked in CANON_INDEX.md.

Working Style

• Keep root foundation docs stable until specific migration passes justify edits
• Use reference/ for real-world baseline, lore/ for Cassowary World systems, and stories/ for narrative exploration
• Add dependency, timeline, and related-document links to lore docs where relevant
• Keep generated/ committed and in sync with source docs
• Prefer updating existing files over creating many new ones
• Use clear headings and structured Markdown