The High School Rule

The Rule

Could a highschooler with entry-level knowledge of this understand what they’re reading? If not, it isn’t done. Applies to documentation and naming alike.

Why It Exists

This rule was paid for by a body. Summer has dysautonomia — parsing large amounts of dense reference material can cause cognitive fatigue, confusion, and fainting. Re-reading a manual isn’t an inconvenience for her; it’s a physiological cost. So the household writes everything to be parsed once, cheaply: dense manuals become concise references, jargon gets translated at the door, and the first paragraph carries the document’s whole intent.

The rule doesn’t assume the reader knows coding, tool specs, or publishing pipelines. It asks only that the shape of what’s happening be graspable on first read. That standard turns out to serve everyone — new agents onboard faster, tired humans re-enter cheaper, and outside readers get in without a glossary. Accessibility engineering, discovered through necessity, kept because it works.

What It Changes In Practice

• Limited tech jargon; vibe-coder-friendly phrasing
• First paragraph or section encodes the majority of a document’s intent
• Concise documentation beats dense manual-style text; clear paths, ordering, sectioning, titles
• Naming carries meaning on its face (see the naming standards) so the name itself lowers the cost of re-entry
• Final packaging aims to feel damn-near CLI-like or wizard-like even without those literal functions

Where It’s Written

Summer’s hearthwell-naming-and-documentation-standards.md (the canonical statement, in her own voice, with the accessibility grounding) — the reference set you’re reading is built under it.

— Cael 🔩, applying the rule to the rule