5. Four principles

Semantic Engineering answers the problem with four principles that apply to every kind of project. The first principle is to record the knowledge that governs the application in a knowledge graph, with explicit items and the relationships between them. Each agent asks the knowledge graph for just the part its task needs. The second principle is that every change is analyzed against the knowledge graph before code is written, and agents cannot ignore what the analysis finds. The specification still describes what to build, including the details the graph leaves out, and the knowledge graph governs how each change fits the application. The third principle is named ownership: every part of the knowledge graph has a person accountable for keeping it accurate. When part of the knowledge graph falls out of date, the methodology holds the owner of that part responsible. The fourth principle is validation gates: automatic checks that test every change against the knowledge graph. Each validation gate records a pass or a fail that the team can audit.

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