# The honesty rule this ledger holds itself to

`design/` describes what AILang **is now**: schema, semantics,
invariants, runtime contracts. It is present-tense by construction.
Two things never belong in a contract or model file:

- **Forward intent** (anything stated as planned, intended, or
  expected of a future iteration rather than true today) — that
  lives in `docs/roadmap.md`.
- **History and rationale** (how a prior draft read, what changed
  since, why one option was chosen, why another was rejected, what
  was dropped in some iteration) — that lives in `docs/journals/`.
  Decision-records are journal content, not ledger content; this is
  the honesty rule it holds itself to.

The single legitimate exception is a present-tense reserved or
deliberately-excluded claim that is explicitly and correctly
labelled. The discriminator is not whether a sentence mentions past
or future, but whether the document asserts something exists, works, or changed that does not.

Ratified by: `crates/ailang-core/tests/docs_honesty_pin.rs`.