construal

A construal says what the situation is being treated as. It is the macro-why: the frame the work reasons inside, written where a reader finds it rather than reconstructed from scope notes. The brief's framing chapter opens with one, under a ## Construal heading, in a sentence or two.

The word carries one sense, and it earns a glossary entry because it is coined in the framing chapter and used freely outside it — in the ADRs, in the reading definitions, and in this glossary's own README, where curating a term is called a framing act because it changes how a later reader construes the record (iss-2609012245352480).

The split that makes it usable

adr-55 divides the word from its history, and both rules are unconditional:

• The construal as it presently stands is committed record — the framing section's statement, the glossary's committed terms, committed scope and vocabulary. A widening reading reads against that statement and nothing behind it.
• Its history is not. Declined construals, superseded terms and the reasoning that settled a terminological dispute stay on the local ledger side, which no automated reviewer reads (adr-50).

The canonical entry for the experiment

Inside the cold-reading experiment the word is defined by the ledger context's construal entry, which this one follows: the frame statement in the framing chapter, one of the three framing surfaces a reading may see, beside the committed glossary terms and the committed scope. This entry carries the sense for the wider record and restates nothing the ledger entry settles.

When to use

Use "construal" for the stated frame — what a piece of work treats the situation as. Use it when the question is why this shape of answer rather than what was built.

When NOT to use

Do not use it for a mechanism claim ("we expect X because Y", recorded on an intent) or for grounds ("why this is being pursued now", recorded at the readiness gate). Those are falsifiable claims about a specific piece of work; a construal is the frame they sit inside. Do not use it for a framing trace — the deliberation that produced the construal, which the record deliberately does not hold.

Examples

• The framing chapter's own construal: the ledger work is treated as a gap in what the repository records, so it adds the missing record rather than restricting what agents may do.
• "The glossary is a deliberate frame surface: what the project chose to name is the part of its construal a machine can read."

Related terms

• record families — the one page that maps the record families and how they relate
• construal (ledger context), the canonical entry for the experiment
• reading-position — the widening position reads against the construal as it stands
• ledger — the local ledger side, where the construal's history stays
• brief — the document whose framing chapter states the construal