Documentation Placement

What it does

Arranges documentation so a reader can find a fact exactly once. The core rule is one home per fact: each fact lives in the tier whose job it is, and everywhere else it is a link. It tells you where a fact belongs, how deep to go, and how to classify a document as tutorial or reference.

The defining constraint: the authoring order is locate → set detail → classify → relocate descendant detail → link. You decide where a fact lives before you write it.

When to reach for it

• Invocation mode. Model-invoked: the agent reaches for it when writing, moving, restructuring, or auditing documentation, or deciding where a fact belongs.
• Trigger boundary. Reach for it when the question is where and how deep. For how each passage is written — preserving propositions, deleting session vantage — use prose-standard. Placement decides the home; prose-standard decides the words.

Prerequisites

A documentation corpus (any size — the tier taxonomy scales from a single README to a large docs tree).

The leading idea: one home

The whole discipline is one principle: each fact has exactly one home, and elsewhere it is a link. A fact stated in two places drifts — one copy ages, the other doesn't — and the reader never knows which is true. Placement is how you guarantee exactly one.

Common questions

Is a word budget a target? No — a ceiling with headroom. When a budget gate goes red, relocate first, condense second, and raise the ceiling only when the words genuinely need the space. A too-low budget is a bug in the budget, not a reason to gut the document.

Can I hand-fix a generated table? No. Generated reference is regenerated from source; if the fact belongs there, change the generator and regenerate. A hand edit is overwritten or, worse, silently diverges from its source.

It's working if

• Every fact has one home; duplicates are links.
• Each document is classified (tutorial or reference) from intended use.
• Detail is progressive: full for its own subject, summarized for children, linked for descendants.
• Generated content is regenerated from source, never hand-edited.
• Budgets are treated as guardrails with headroom, not reduction targets.

Where it fits

The placement half of the documentation discipline, alongside prose-standard (the writing half). Both are reach-for-it-anytime standalones.