Concepts

Fresh

These documents explain the fundamental features that make MD-LD unique. Read them to understand the design philosophy, not just the syntax.

Concept Map

graph TD
    A[Semantic Text] --> B[Subject System]
    A --> C[Polarity System]
    B --> D[Primary Metadata]
    C --> E[Origin System]
    D --> F[Knowledge Round Trip]
    E --> F
    F --> G[Quad Runtime]
    G --> H[Token Efficiency]
    H --> I[Human Scale]

Core Concepts

Semantic Infrastructure as Readable Text

The philosophical foundation: how MD-LD transforms semantic systems into directly writable, inspectable, mergeable plain text. Explains the shift from "yet another RDF syntax" to "semantic-native infrastructure."

Read: Semantic Text

Subject System

Subject declaration and context management. How {=IRI} establishes persistent scope, how subjects chain through blocks, and how prefix contexts fold and compose.

Read: Subject System

Polarity and Retraction

Sophisticated diff authoring using + and - prefixes for document evolution. Model state transitions, diffs, and collaborative edits as first-class semantic citizens.

Read: Polarity

Origin System

Lean, efficient provenance tracking with line-to-quad mapping. Enables UI navigation, source attribution, and round-trip document regeneration without bloating the source text.

Read: Origin System

Elevated Statements

Automatic rdf:Statement pattern detection that extracts the "golden graph" of meta-level facts. Enables reification and statement-level metadata without verbose syntax.

Read: Elevated Statements

Primary Metadata System

The dual-layer architecture for document identity: primarySubject (canonical storage identity) and primary (semantic surface). Provides immediate access to type, label, and comment for the document without parsing the quads.

Read: Primary Metadata

Knowledge Round Trip

The breathing cycles of knowledge from text to quads and back to composable text records — human-scale semantic documents that can be transformed back into other documents using scalable JS functions.

Read: Knowledge Round Trip

Human Scale

Philosophy manifesto: why semantic systems drift toward complexity, and how MD-LD enables human-readable, deterministic, locally-inspectable computation.

Read: Human Scale

Quad Runtime

The paradigm shift from databases and query languages to a pure Text to Quads to Text loop with JavaScript as the graph traversal and transformation language.

Read: Quad Runtime

Token Efficiency

Grounded comparison of MD-LD, JSON-LD, and Turtle token consumption across two tokenizers and seven example cases.

Read: Token Efficiency

Use Cases

Practical examples and applications across different domains — personal knowledge management, developer documentation, academic research, content management, data integration, and business processes.

Read: Use Cases