The formula · part one
The metamodel is the schema every team shares: node types, relationships, properties and lifecycle states, defined once. It is not a data dictionary — a dictionary lists words. This one is validated: a relationship can only exist between types that permit it, and every node carries a lifecycle the platform enforces.
452
146
223
77
The classification
Single-axis catalogs classify by domain alone, and that breaks the moment one classification has to cover a factory-floor machine, an AI model, a legal obligation and a sales process with equal precision.
Where it lives — ten Organization Dimensions, each owning the governance and lifecycle of what sits in it. What it fundamentally is and does — twelve Function Dimensions, universal archetypes carrying a semantic contract. Together: 452 typed node types.
Organization Dimension
types
cat.
Strategy & Impact
Human Resource
Business
Governance & Compliance
Data & Knowledge
Application
Technology
Physical Assets
External Entities
Artificial Intelligence
The order is not alphabetical and not by size. It is the order in which an organisation comes into being: intent first, then the people, then the business they run, then the rules they run it under, then the knowledge, the applications, the technology, the physical plant, the outside world they trade with — and, last, the intelligence that reads all nine.
"Show me every Task in the Governance domain" stops being a custom join.
The functional axis, in full
Motivation and Constraint are the two poles — what the organisation is pursuing, and what it cannot do. Every other element lives between them.
Motivation
Constraint
Actor
Task
Resource
Service
Environment
Event
Information
Knowledge
Skill & Features
Group
Each one carries the question that identifies it, the boundary that separates it from its neighbours, and the categories that refine it — and the twelve connect through one closed grammar of typed relations.
Extension
Two claims that sound incompatible: the grammar is closed, and you can extend it. Both are true, and the reconciliation is the most important sentence on this page.
What is open is the vocabulary — you add the node types your organisation actually needs. What is closed is the grammar: a new type must be assigned one of the twelve archetypes, and it inherits that archetype's permitted relationships. You gain a word; you do not get to invent syntax.
And extension is not free-form. Every type carries four required slots, and the fourth is the one no catalog asks for: when not to use it — the boundary that keeps two teams from quietly creating overlapping types for the same thing.
The moment the type exists, it is part of what the agent knows. So:
In every metadata system you have used, growth meant entropy. Here, growth means precision.
Guidance
Every type carries four required, translatable slots. They are structural, so they cannot be skipped:
how to use
when to use
usage example
when NOT to use
This is the opposite of the usual arrangement. A mandatory annual training ends with a list of procedures and email addresses somebody is expected to memorise for a situation that may arrive in eight months — and a completion certificate that proves attendance, not retention. The guidance sits far from the moment of action, so the moment of action is where it is missing.
Here the guidance is on the type, at the point of use. Nobody has to remember where it lives, because it does not live anywhere else.
And the same four slots the person reads are what the agent reads to disambiguate. One source, two consumers.
Perspectives
one canonical node
unchanged
A documentation tool gives each team its own page; a metamodel gives every team its own view on the same page.
Which matters because the alternative is a corporate naming agreement — a project nobody wants to lead, and the reason most shared-model efforts die before they ship anything.
Built in
Each node type defines its own responsibility matrix, drawn from the responsibility types the platform ships with — and any your organisation adds. So every node is born knowing who answers for it. Nobody wires that up per node.
Owner
Is Owned By
Steward
Is Stewarded By
Custodian
Is In Custody Of
Reviewer
Is Reviewed By
Approver
Is Approved By
Sponsor
Is Sponsored By
Finance Controller
Finances Are Controlled By
Legal Advisor
Is Legally Advised By
Risk Manager
Risk Is Managed By
Data Controller
Processing Is Controlled By
Data Processor
Has Processing Performed By
Operator
Is Operated By
Subject Matter Expert
Expertise Is Provided By
And every node carries a lifecycle state the platform enforces — 77 statuses, each belonging to one of seven families. The families are the universal spine; the statuses are your domain's vocabulary. Same two-level shape as the types themselves.
And the family a status belongs to is itself a decision:
Missing from Source
Implemented
Proposed
Staleness, verification and re-routing are not reports about the model — they are positions in it.
The passage
What fills it is your organisation — and the useful part is that it does not start empty: it starts from the systems you run and the catalog your team already curated.