Style

How Solid Memo's code, data and docs are written. Most of it describes what the code already does, so new code reads like the code around it. When this page and the code disagree, follow the code nearby and fix this page.

Formatting

• Two spaces to indent, never tabs; LF line endings; UTF-8; a newline at the end of every file; no spaces at the end of a line. .editorconfig tells editors so, and .gitattributes keeps git to it on every system.
• Four spaces in Turtle, as its house style has it (below), and in Python, as PEP 8 has it.
• TypeScript: double quotes, a semicolon after every statement, a trailing comma in a literal or call that spans lines, and parentheses around an arrow function's parameters, even one: (card) => card.id.
• Lines up to 100 characters.
• JSON: one item a line in an object or a list, as npm writes package.json; a trailing comma only in JSON with comments (.jsonc).

Biome formats and lints the TypeScript, JavaScript, JSON and CSS as biome.jsonc says, and npm run check fails on a file it would change. It leaves alone what is written by tools (the generated vocabulary, the lock files), the vendored files, and the Turtle in decks/ and ns/, which has its own formatter.

npm run format   # rewrite the files as Biome formats them, and apply its safe fixes
npm run lint     # check them, as npm run check does: formatting and lint rules

Biome's recommended lint rules are on. A rule that fires on code that is right as it is, is turned off in biome.jsonc with its reason beside it; a problem it finds is fixed.

In an editor, install Biome's extension (biomejs.biome for VS Code, which .vscode/extensions.json and the dev container recommend; others are listed on biomejs.dev), and make it the formatter for these files, on save if you like. It reads the same biome.jsonc, so the editor and the check agree.

The code was reformatted with Biome in one commit, which changed nothing else. .git-blame-ignore-revs lists it, so GitHub's blame looks past it; locally, run git config blame.ignoreRevsFile .git-blame-ignore-revs once. The file names a commit by its SHA, and the merge queue merges every pull request with a merge commit, which keeps its commits' SHAs (testing.md). So a pull request that adds a formatting commit can list its SHA in the file before it is merged.

TypeScript

The compiler holds the code to most of the rules (tsconfig.base.json): strict, no unused variables or parameters, no case falling through to the next in a switch, and verbatimModuleSyntax, so a type is imported with import type or type X in the import list.

• Imports follow the layers in boundaries.md, which npm run check:boundaries checks. A package is imported by its name and module (@solid-memo/domain/deck), never by a relative path out of its folder.
• Pure where it can be. The domain is plain types and pure functions; input and output happen behind the application's ports (architecture.md).
• Plain data. Interfaces and type aliases for data, readonly where data is not meant to change, functions over it rather than classes. A class is for something with a lifetime: an adapter, a store, an error.
• Errors the user may see are an AppError with a code, whose text every language has (appError.ts); an error only a programming mistake can cause stays a plain Error.
• Avoid any, and use a non-null assertion (!) only where the code just made sure of the value, or in a test.
• Tests sit beside the module they test, as name.test.ts, and keep every package at 100% coverage (testing.md). Code no test can reach is removed, not excluded.

Naming

Names are whole words in the language of the domain (deck, card, review, release), not abbreviations: description, not desc.

Turtle

The hand-written Turtle in ns/, decks/ and the vocab package's fixtures/ has a house style, which formatTurtle.ts defines and writes. In short:

• @base first, then the prefixes, aligned in one block;
• every subject on a line of its own, then one predicate per line, indented four spaces, and further objects aligned under the first;
• a blank line between subjects;
• lists and blank nodes inline;
• text with a line break as a long string, """…""", written verbatim.

npm run format:turtle rewrites the files and npm run format:turtle:check fails on any that differ. A comment stays with the subject it comes before. A published version (vN.ttl under decks/ and ns/shapes/) is formatted once, before it is published, and never changes after; vendor/ is not ours and is never reformatted.

Comments

• Every module starts, after its license header, with a /** … */ block that says what it is for and why it exists. An exported function, type or constant has one too, unless its name says all there is.
• A comment says why, or what is not obvious: the rule the code follows, the case it guards against, the server it works around. It does not repeat what the code says.
• A comment links the docs page that explains more, by its path in the repository: (docs/migrations.md).
• A comment is kept true: a change to the code changes its comment in the same commit.

Licenses

Every file says who holds its copyright and under which license it may be reused, as the REUSE specification has it, so a file copied out of the repository still says so. A file that can carry a comment does, in a header at its top:

// SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Anton Wiklund and Solid Memo contributors
//
// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT

A new file starts with that header, in its own kind of comment (# in YAML, a Dockerfile or a shell script, /* … */ in CSS). The reuse tool writes it:

reuse annotate --copyright "Anton Wiklund and Solid Memo contributors" --year 2026 --license MIT <file>

• A shebang stays on the first line, and the header follows it.
• A test's // @vitest-environment node stays on the first line too, and a blank line comes between it and the header. reuse takes a comment that touches the header for part of it, and drops it the next time it rewrites the header.

The files that cannot carry a header, or must not be edited, are licensed in REUSE.toml instead: the Markdown (kept free of headers so that it reads cleanly), the HTML (whose doctype comes first), JSON, pictures, test fixtures, the generated vocabulary, the published Turtle in decks/ and ns/, and the vendored shapes, which keep their authors' licenses. A new file of one of those kinds is covered by the pattern that matches it. The text of each license is in LICENSES/.

A library deck is under the license it states in dcterms:license, so REUSE.toml lists each deck under its license, and a new deck is added there under its own. npm run check:reuse, part of npm run check, fails when a version's dcterms:license is not the license REUSE.toml gives it (testing.md). A deck under a license no deck has used yet needs its SPDX identifier in checkReuse.ts and its text in LICENSES/ (reuse download <SPDX id>).

reuse lint checks that every file in the repository has both, in CI's docs job (testing.md), not in npm run check; npm run lint:reuse runs it locally with reuse installed (pipx install reuse), and pipx run reuse lint or uv run --no-project --with reuse reuse lint run it without installing it.

Docs

• Each part of the app has a page in docs/, listed in its index with one sentence. A new page is added to the index in the same commit.
• A page starts with what it is about in a sentence or two, then links the code: a page says how and why, the code says what.
• A change that changes what a page says updates the page in the same commit.
• Examples are real: a command that runs, a path that exists, Turtle from the repository.
• The docs are written in the app's own Markdown dialect (markdown.md), so they read the same wherever that dialect is rendered. It has no autolink literals: a URL is a link, or is written in <…> (markdownlint's MD034 checks it), and a local address that is not meant to be followed, such as http://localhost:4173, is a code span. It has no task lists either: a checklist item starts with its state in bold, Done. or Open. The docs use no images and no raw HTML.
• A diagram is a Mermaid flowchart, graph, sequenceDiagram or stateDiagram-v2 block. It starts with an accTitle: (a short name) and an accDescr: (one sentence that says what it shows), for readers who cannot see it, and has no %%{…}%% directive: every diagram is drawn with the same settings (markdown.md).
• A diagram's text uses only printable ASCII, Latin-1 without the soft hyphen, and – — ‘ ’ “ ” … −. That rules out arrows, which the app's font, Fredoka, lacks, so a word says it (to, and back). A label never holds a ; outside quotes, since Mermaid ends the statement there: a state diagram's transition label, which cannot be quoted, is cut short and stray states are drawn, without an error. A label with other punctuation Mermaid reads, such as a . in a dotted edge or parentheses in a node, is quoted (-. "main.tsx only" .->, D["round(x)"]), and >= is written in words, since Mermaid can drop the >. A word in an edge label is at most about 25 characters wide, since Mermaid wraps an edge label at 200 pixels and splits a longer word: a long address is shortened to its host (guest.solid-memo.invalid). npm run check names any other character, with its file and line.
• The docs are also rendered as pages (markdown.md), and npm run check renders them: a page opens with one heading of level 1, then a paragraph that says what it is about; no two headings of a page have the same text; every page is linked from the README; and every link leads to a page, heading, file or folder that is there.
• After a diagram is changed, check on GitHub that it still draws as meant: GitHub's Mermaid version and label mode differ from other renderers', and a diagram one of them accepts another can reject or draw differently.

Language

English is the authoritative language of the code, the docs, commit messages, issues and pull requests. The app's messages are translated into the other languages it speaks (i18n.md); English is their source.

• Plain English. Short sentences in the active voice; everyday words over jargon. A term a newcomer may not know (pod, WebID, SHACL) is explained or linked the first time a page uses it.
• American spelling is the one standard: license, color, organize, catalog, behavior, toward, canceled, learned; a box is checked, not given a tick. It holds for the docs, the comments, the English messages and the test titles alike, and npm run lint:spelling (cspell, part of npm run check) checks the Markdown and en.json for it (testing.md). What is not ours to respell keeps the spelling it has: the published Turtle in decks/ and ns/, which never changes; a term of a data format or an IRI; a message key every catalog shares; an ARIA name (aria-labelledby); and the title of something external, quoted as it is.
• Say what is: describe what the code does now, not what it used to do or what it may do one day.

Commits

A commit is one change, whole: the code, its tests and its docs together, with npm run check passing. A file generated from another (packages/vocab/src/*.generated.ts from ns/) is committed with the change that generated it.

A commit message follows Conventional Commits, as CONTRIBUTING.md says, and has:

• a header, type(scope): subject, its subject in the imperative, lowercase, saying what the project or its users gain, not which files changed: "feat(i18n): keep a deck's title in every language, shown in the reader's", not "Update deck.ts"; the whole header is at most 100 characters;
• after a blank line, a body that says why: the problem, the choice made and what it rules out, wrapped at 72 characters;
• a Closes: #12 line naming the issue the change finishes, or a Refs: #12 line for one it only relates to, and a BREAKING CHANGE: line for a breaking change.

git log shows many examples; the commits before version 1.0.0 have the same body, under a header in sentence case, almost always with no type.