# Projection

> A Projection is a representation of the origin, negotiated and rendered for a specific consumer. It is one of many faces of a single source of truth.

A deterministic rendering of canonical origin data into a target format such as HTML, Markdown, JSON, JSON-LD, llms.txt or MCP, chosen by content negotiation rather than assumed. No projection is privileged. All are equal and consistent.

## Why it matters

- Different consumers consume different things. A browser wants HTML. A crawler wants JSON-LD. An agent wants a tool manifest. Serve each what it can use.
- Projections are generated from one source, so they cannot contradict each other. The machine view and the human view are the same truth, differently shaped.
- Cross-posting is projection. An article on heliacon.com is canonical. The same piece elsewhere is a non-canonical projection that points home with rel=canonical.

## Examples

- origin.md and origin.html are both projections of origin.yaml.
- A definition is projected to JSON for an API, to HTML for a person and to an entry in llms.txt for a model.
- A cross-posted article is a projection of a corpus entry, carrying a canonical link back to the origin.

## Not this

- Hand-maintaining the same content in three formats until they drift.
- A machine format that says something the human page does not, or the reverse.

## Related

origin, invocation, provenance

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id: projection · version: 0.1 · status: draft · source: https://heliacon.com/research/definitions/projection/