These documents describe the repository as it stands. History, where it is needed, is a pointer rather than a chapter: the pre-rewrite tree is archived on the golden-reference tag (mirrored at archive/golden-reference), the calls the rewrite made are dated records under decisions/, and the behavioral differences accepted against the archived reference are decision 18.

Read in this order to learn the system: format.md is the centre, generate.md and enrich.md are how a bundle comes to be, app.md is what serves it, render-seam.md and analysis.md are what pictures it, and decisions/ is why any of it is shaped this way.

The documents

Document	What it is
`format.md`	Normative `.atlas` v3 spec, sufficient alone to implement a reader: the container, the manifest, the world payload, the `ATLASLOC` bytes, stamps and ordering, validation, the registry directory, and a checklist for a new reader.
`semconv/REGISTRY.md`	The attribute vocabulary, generated from `spec/registry.yaml`; `spec/gen`'s own test holds the committed copy up to date.
`generate.md`	The generate lane: the interchange document, the sources and their gates, the capture archive, tile derivation, composition, curation. §2.8 is the "add a source" walkthrough.
`enrich.md`	The enrich lane: the enricher interface, the contribution format, the ledger vocabulary, the curated queue, the maturity score.
`analysis.md`	The cell-system contract: the eighteen methods, coordinates and continuity, the `Ground` descriptor, the plan order, the style tokens. §9 is the "add a third system" checklist.
`app.md`	The hypermedia application: routes, the session record, regions and partials, the state island, the hostenv contract and the three-host story.
`render-seam.md`	The brief for rewriting `render/` blind: the scene description, the standing set, the chart, the globe, the diagnostics duty. §10.1 names what the document does not carry.
`workbench.md`	The operator's surface: its pages, its operations, the operation runner as a consumable library, and the safety properties.
`snapshots.md`	The reusable scheduled-build workflow a city runs over its own data, and the one-time setup it needs.
`testing.md`	The whole test surface: `make test`, `make test-e2e`, `make corpus-smoke`, what tests are made of, where they live, and the bar for a new one.
`stamps.md`	What a build stamp is a promise of, why it cannot be recomputed from a bundle, and what is enforced instead.
`logging.md`	The one event stream: levels, the shared attribute keys, handler and flag conventions for the CLI and the browser.
`decisions/`	Dated records of the calls that shaped all of the above, each with its context and consequences.