Projection

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.

In practice

• 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.

Provenance