Lithoglyph

Stone-carved data for the ages.

Where Forth carves glyphs into permanence.

Overview

Note

Project status: Active, secondary priority. LithoGlyph is working towards production for specialist use in journalism, narrative arts, and media/communications. It is not the primary priority project right now — that is VeriSimDB, which is a substantial undertaking in cross-modal database consistency. Lessons learned from VeriSimDB (drift detection, formal verification, federation architecture) will directly improve LithoGlyph when development focus returns here. For most journalism, storytelling, and media workflows, LithoGlyph and its query language GQL are likely the database you want. The narrative-first, reversible, audit-grade design is built specifically for this domain. VeriSimDB and VCL/VCL-UT become more relevant when your work involves cross-source investigative verification, large-scale entity tracking across multiple systems, long-term identity consistency, or situations where you need to prove that data across different databases has not drifted apart. For everything else — the story you want to write, the sources you want to cite, the narrative you want to build — LithoGlyph is designed to be your storage layer. In the long run, LithoGlyph is intended to work intimately with tools like bofig in the portfolio and serve as a database for journalism and PR applications more broadly.

Lithoglyph (from Greek lithos "stone" + glyphein "to carve") is a narrative-first, reversible, audit-grade database core. Like ancient glyphs carved in stone, Lithoglyph treats schemas, constraints, migrations, blocks, and journals as permanent narrative artefacts—the database is part of the story, not an opaque substrate.

The name reflects the core metaphor: Forth code sculpts data onto disk, carving each operation into permanent, auditable stone.

Core Thesis

Schemas, constraints, migrations, blocks, and journals are narrative artefacts. The database is part of the story, not an opaque substrate. Data is carved in stone—permanent, auditable, reversible.

Primary Values

Principle	Priority
Auditability	> Performance
Meaning	> Features
Reversibility	> Throughput
Agent Understanding	Required

Target Domains

• Investigative journalism

• Governance/compliance

• Agentic ecosystems + multi-repo handover

• Long-term cultural/institutional archives

Repository Structure

lithoglyph/
├── spec/ # Format specs + rationale (AsciiDoc)
├── core-forth/ # Form.Blocks + Form.Model (truth core)
├── core-zig/ # Form.Bridge (ABI + port framing)
├── core-factor/ # Form.Runtime (GQL + introspection)
├── control-plane/ # Elixir/OTP gateway (optional)
├── tools/ # Render/inspect/doctor utilities
├── test-vectors/ # Golden bytes + golden renders
└── stories/ # Narrative examples + onboarding artefacts

Architecture

Lithoglyph is structured in layers, each with a specific language and responsibility:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Form.ControlPlane (Elixir/OTP - optional) │
│ Sessions, supervision, cluster edge │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Form.Normalizer (Factor + Lean 4) │
│ FD discovery, type encoding, proof-carrying normalization │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Form.Runtime (Factor) │
│ GQL parse/plan/exec, explain, introspection │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Form.Bridge (Zig) │
│ Stable Zig ABI (no C), safety governor │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Form.Model (Forth) │
│ Multi-model logical layer: documents, edges, schemas │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Form.Blocks (Forth) │
│ Deterministic storage, journal, reversibility primitives │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Layer Details

Form.Blocks (Forth)

• Fixed-size blocks with symbolic headers

• Append-only journal

• Crash recovery and integrity checks

• Repair guidance

Form.Model (Forth)

• Document collections

• Edge collections

• Schema + constraint metadata

• Migration artefacts

Form.Bridge (Zig)

• Stable Zig ABI for runtimes (no C dependency)

• Opaque handles + byte buffers + explicit error codes

• Marshalling only; no business logic duplication

• Uses callconv(.C) for FFI compatibility without requiring C toolchain

Form.Runtime (Factor)

• GQL minimal subset for PoC

• Planner steps introspection

• Constraint explanation surfaces

• Provenance surfaces

Form.Normalizer (Factor + Lean 4)

• Automatic functional dependency discovery (DFD/TANE/FDHits)

• Type encoding of FDs in GQL-DT

• Normal form predicates (1NF through BCNF)

• Proof-carrying schema evolution

• Narrative explanations for all normalization decisions

• See Self-Normalizing Specification

Form.ControlPlane (Elixir/OTP, optional)

• Out-of-process core engine via port

• Sessions and supervision

• Cluster edge coordination

Core Invariants

These are non-negotiable guarantees:

Truth Ownership	On-disk truth is owned by the block/journal layer; higher layers do not bypass it.
Journal-First	Every mutating operation is journaled before being considered committed.
Reversibility	Every committed operation MUST have a defined inverse OR be explicitly marked irreversible-with-story.
Renderability	Blocks and journal entries MUST be renderable deterministically into human/agent-readable form.
Provenance	All query results can optionally include provenance pointers to journal and blocks.
Constraints as Ethics	Constraints are explainable: rejections must return reasons + pointers + narrative rationale.

GQL (Glyph Query Language)

GQL is the query language for Lithoglyph—the native query interface for this narrative-first database. The name "Glyph Query Language" reflects the stone-carving metaphor: each query carves new glyphs (data) into permanence.

PoC subset capabilities:

• INSERT document into collection

• INSERT edge (from, to, type, props)

• SELECT with simple predicates

• EXPLAIN (returns plan + reasons)

• INTROSPECT schema/constraints

• Optional provenance output

Non-Goals

• Be a drop-in Postgres replacement

• Win microbenchmarks

• Ship full distributed consensus in the first PoC

PoC Acceptance Criteria

• Single-node db open/close

• Append-only journal with deterministic rendering

• Document + edge insert/select

• Constraint rejection returns explain payload

• Migration artefact recorded + reversible

• Golden test vectors pass

• Seam checks (B↔M, M↔R, B↔R) pass at freeze

Open Questions

See .machine_readable/HANDOVER.a2ml for structured open questions with acceptance criteria:

Core PoC

• Q-BLOCK-HEADER-001: Minimal block header layout

• Q-JOURNAL-ENTRY-001: Minimal journal entry schema

• Q-ABI-BLOBS-001: ABI blob encoding choice

• Q-GQL-POC-001: GQL PoC grammar

• Q-CTRL-PLANE-001: Elixir/OTP introduction timing

Self-Normalizing (Form.Normalizer)

• Q-NORM-001: Default FD discovery algorithm (DFD vs TANE vs FDHits)

• Q-NORM-002: Approximate FD handling policy

• Q-NORM-003: Denormalization support scope

• Q-NORM-004: GQL-DT proof integration interface

• Q-NORM-005: Query rewriting for affected queries

Documentation

Getting Started

• Quickstart Guide - Get running in 5 minutes

• Versioning & Stability - API stability guarantees

• Changelog - Release history

Architecture & Design

• Architecture - Technical architecture deep-dive

• Roadmap - Development roadmap

• Philosophy - Design philosophy and principles

• .machine_readable/HANDOVER.a2ml - Machine-readable specification

Specifications

• GQL Specification - Query language reference

• GQL Dependent Types - Compile-time verified queries

• Self-Normalizing Database - Automatic FD discovery, proof-carrying schema evolution

• Block Format - Storage layer specification

• Journal Format - Audit log specification

Operations

• Deployment Guide - Run Lithoglyph in production

• Observability - Monitoring, logging, tracing

• Security & Auth - Authentication and hardening

Integration

• API Reference - Programmatic interfaces

• Migration from RDBMS - Moving from PostgreSQL/MySQL

• Integration Patterns - Queues, search, analytics

Domain-Specific

• WP05 - Lithoglyph for Interactive Documentary/Journalism

Related Projects

• GQL-DT - Dependently-typed GQL (same database, compile-time proofs)

• Lithoglyph Studio - Zero-friction GUI for non-technical users

• BoFIG - Evidence graph for investigative journalism

• Zotero-Lithoglyph - Post-truth reference manager with PROMPT scores

• Lithoglyph Debugger - Proof-carrying database debugger (Lean 4 + Idris 2)

• FormBase - Open-source Airtable alternative with provenance

License

Code is MPL-2.0; documentation is CC-BY-SA-4.0. This is the estate canonical pair, set by nextgen-databases#48.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.adoc for guidelines.