grounded_in

A predicate declaring that the subject rests on the object as its normative or structural foundation — a substrate the subject cannot hold without. The relationship is stronger than influence: a subject grounded_in:: a target depends on that target for its own coherence, and removing the target would undermine the subject's claim to stand.

The edge lands in Relations when the subject is a node whose grounding is load-bearing for its authority — a Contract grounded in a Decision, a Requirement grounded in a Conviction, a Pattern grounded in a prior Pattern whose Forces the new Pattern inherits.

Carries

The predicate names a foundation: the subject rests on the object as substrate, and the object's authority is what the subject's authority flows from. When a Contract's Requirement is grounded_in::[[X Decision]], the Decision is what the Requirement cites as its source of commitment — the Requirement enforces what the Decision commits. When a Conviction is grounded_in::[[Y Substrate Conviction]], the derivative Conviction specializes the substrate one and inherits its normative force. The web of associations the predicate activates is the stack of grounding under any claim in the graph — a reader traversing grounded_in:: edges from a Requirement backwards reads the chain of commitments the Requirement rests on.

Grounding is structural, not decorative. A subject removed from its grounding is a subject without a foundation, and its authority is not recoverable from any other edge on the node. This is what distinguishes grounding from weaker influence relations like precedent or inspiration.

Crescent

Against [[informed_by -- weaker influence than grounded_in]]

informed_by:: names weaker influence: the subject draws on the object as precedent or shape, but the object is not the subject's substrate. A subject informed_by:: a target continues to stand if the target is weakened or withdrawn; a subject grounded_in:: a target does not. The distinction is between shape-without-dependence (informed_by) and structural dependence (grounded_in). Authors making the choice between them signal how load-bearing the relation is: choosing grounded_in:: is a stronger commitment than choosing informed_by::, and the predicate carries that weight.

Against [[derived_from]]

Ghost link; derived_from:: is not yet seeded as a Predicate. derived_from:: is construction provenance — how this node came to exist, the antecedent conversation or meeting or prior reasoning that produced it. grounded_in:: is normative or structural foundation — what this node rests on for its authority. The distinction is between construction (how it was built) and foundation (what it stands on). The same source can sometimes ground a node and be its construction antecedent; when that happens, both edges are appropriate, each carrying a distinct kind of relationship to the same target.

Typing

Conviction-to-Decision case: structural corollary

A Conviction MAY use grounded_in::[[X Decision]] when the Conviction is a structural corollary of the Decision — when the Decision's property is what makes the Conviction's stance possible to hold. The direction of authority in this case runs Decision → Conviction: the Decision enables the Conviction, and the Conviction would lose its basis if the Decision were withdrawn. Example: [[Folders Serve Human Legibility, Not the Graph]]↗ carries grounded_in::[[Decisions/Adopt Wikilinks and Named Edges]]↗ because without wikilinks-by-filename and author-declared edges, folders would have to carry graph semantics, and the folder-independence stance could not be held.

This case contrasts with the substrate-side relation, where a Conviction is the normative substrate that generates a Decision — that direction uses informs_downstream:: from the Conviction (see informs_downstream Typing). Both predicates may legitimately connect a Conviction and a Decision; the choice between them encodes which one is the normative source and which is the structural corollary, and the distinction is preserved by writing the edge on the dependent side in each case.

Instances

Relations