Artifact rules

Stable

Rule 2 of the archive: every artifact has exactly one canonical location, and everything else references it.

When to register

It is referenced from more than one place.
It would need to be cited.

A figure drafted for one section of one chapter is a working file in the archive/ tree. The moment it also appears in a paper, it becomes a FIG- record and both places reference the record.

What registration requires

Requirement	Why
Identifier	So it can be referenced without ambiguity
Page	So the reference resolves to something
Registry entry	So it appears in the map and validation
Provenance	What produced it, by identifier
Canonical file	One location, named on the page
Referenced-by	What depends on it, so a change can be assessed

Why one location matters

The failure this prevents is specific and common. A figure is exported to a paper directory. The underlying run is corrected. The chapter’s copy is regenerated; the paper’s copy is not. Both are called “Figure 3”. Six months later they disagree and there is no record of which is current.

With one canonical record, there is one file, one regeneration, and the referenced-by list says exactly what needs rechecking.

Generated, not drawn

Figures and tables are generated from data by code. Both are identified, and the regeneration command is on the artifact’s source page. A hand-drawn figure cannot be regenerated when the run behind it changes, so it will keep showing the old result, and it will do so silently.

Diagrams are the exception: they are authored, but as source (Mermaid or equivalent) inside the page rather than as an image. Source can be diffed, reviewed and corrected; an exported image cannot.

Files, not pages

Binary artifact files never live in content/. They live in:

Location	For
`public/assets/`	Anything the site must serve to a reader
`archive/`	Working material and anything not published
An external store	Anything large; the record holds location and checksum