| name | linguistic-rigor-active-voice |
| description | Checklist for enforcing NASA-style active voice, LCM Level 1/2 verbs, and canonical Data Boar lexicon stability in code, docs, commit messages, and PR reviews. Use when writing or reviewing docstrings, module comments, PowerShell CBH, Python function names, technical docs, or any prose produced for this repo. |
Linguistic Rigor — Active Voice and Lexicon Stability
Policy source: linguistic-rigor-and-performance.mdc (situational — @linguistic-rigor-and-performance.mdc or docs/cursor globs).
This skill provides a practical checklist for use during writing and PR review.
1. Voice gate — find and replace
Forbidden (passive voice) — flag and rewrite:
| Passive (forbidden) | Active replacement |
|---|
| "foram feitos" | "O sistema executou" / "O script gerou" |
| "é permitido" | "O gate permite" / "O operador pode" |
| "são aplicados" | "O módulo aplica" / "O detector impõe" |
| "Os logs são gerados" | "O sistema gera logs" |
| "É processado" | "O conector processa" |
Rule: the subject must be a concrete actor (module, script, gate, operator) performing the action — never the action itself happening to an unnamed subject.
2. LCM Level 1–2 — verb precision for code descriptions
Use Level 1/2 Linguistic Category Model verbs when describing code behavior in docstrings, CBH headers, and commit messages. These describe concrete, observable actions:
- ✅
executes, validates, emits, filters, samples, raises, returns, inserts, truncates
- ❌
handles, manages, deals with, processes things, helps (vague; no observable action)
Applying to Python docstrings:
def sample_column(conn, col):
"""Handles column sampling."""
def sample_column(conn, col):
"""Executes a non-null sample query against *col* and returns up to N rows."""
Applying to PowerShell CBH .SYNOPSIS:
# Bad
# .SYNOPSIS Manages lab connections.
# Good
# .SYNOPSIS Establishes an SSH session to the lab host and returns the exit code.
3. Canonical lexicon — four frozen terms
These four terms are never renamed, aliased, or replaced in any operator- or customer-facing surface (reports, docs, CLI output, marketing copy):
| Term | Canonical meaning |
|---|
| Data Sniffing | Discovery and sampling pass |
| Deep Boring | Structured compliance-report depth |
| Safe-Hold | Safe suspension state — scan halted due to missing or insufficient evidence |
| Audit Trail | Immutable session and finding record; evidence chain for compliance reporting |
Breaking-change contract for these terms: ADR-0048.
4. Review checklist
When reviewing a PR, docstring addition, or doc update, run through:
References
