Registered Expressions and Tilde Grammar

Grammar is infrastructure

The tilde grammar gives people and machines a compact way to distinguish different semantic objects. The number of tildes is meaningful; the enclosed form is also meaningful. They must not be used interchangeably.

• ~WellbeingIdentity names a protocol.
• ~~EarnedIdentity names a node within that protocol.
• ~~~DID names a facet within a node.
• ~Cortisol Checker~ is an enclosed registered expression.

The obsolete shorthand that treated an application as a single open prefix is removed from this edition. ~Cortisol Checker~ is not the same object as the facet ~~~Cortisol, and neither is the expression's Word Wallet.

What registration adds

Enclosure marks a routable expression whose public record can identify:

• a slug and human-readable title;
• current lifecycle status;
• one or more versions;
• supported modalities;
• consent scope;
• accountable handler identifier and contract version;
• protocol trace;
• associated Word Wallet.

The grammar makes references less ambiguous, but registration supplies the operational contract. A string alone cannot establish governance, safety, or scientific validity.

Canonical trace

The current Cortisol Checker version declares this protocol trace:

~WellbecomingProtocol → ~~Emotion → ~~~Cortisol

That trace says where the expression is grounded. It does not rename the facet and does not claim that the handler measures a hormone. The public description is deliberately narrower: a language-stress-load research beta.

Human-readable and machine-resolvable

The same expression should be legible in prose and resolvable through an API. This dual form allows public pages to explain context while software verifies identifiers, versions, modalities, and permissions.

The grammar should remain conservative. New notation creates coordination costs. A proposal should enter the canonical Spec only when its meaning, validation rules, and compatibility consequences are documented.

References and grounding

• IoV Registry
• Registered Expression schema
• Cortisol Checker expression detail