Siegel-Spec v7

Status: Current canonical (since 2026-08-02). Geometry is unchanged from v5; the axes are now W/G/B — Wortlaut, Geist, Beleg (in English contexts glossed Wording, Geist, Record), and the binary B-axis uses belegt / ausstehend. The letters follow the German canon, as Geist always has. The semantic basis lives in Foundation §7. The predecessors v6 and v5 are frozen at /spec/siegel-v6/ and /spec/siegel-v5/.

Axes

The seal documents three axes of the genesis of a text:

• Top row — Wortlaut (W). Zero to five dots. Degree of substrate mediation of the linguistic surface.
• Middle row — Geist (G). Zero to five dots. Degree of substrate mediation of the Geist — the content, the ideas, the structure. Geist is German, untranslated; an occasional gloss is Ghost from the Machine. The project’s diagnostic formula is Geist aus der Maschine: how much of what appears as the work’s spirit was imported from the machine?
• Bottom row — Beleg (B). Binary, glossed Record in English. No bar: the bibliographic record is documented. Right-aligned half-stroke: the record is pending.

Dots mean substrate mediation. Their absence means the author alone. The half-stroke is a marker for a pending bibliographic record, not a judgment of the work.

Parameters

Three inputs:

• wortlaut — integer from 0 to 5. W dots, top row.
• geist — integer from 0 to 5. G dots, middle row.
• beleg — enum belegt or ausstehend. B state, bottom row.

Optional:

• strokeWidth — number, default 1.8. For inline use in running text, 2.4 is recommended.

Geometry

Coordinate system: viewBox="0 0 130 100". All units refer to this system.

Brackets

Two square brackets with inward serifs. Serif depth: 8 units inward.

All bracket elements are rendered as <rect>, not as <path> or <line>. Stroke width matches strokeWidth. Corners exactly right-angled — no rounding.

Dots

Five fixed slot positions per row. Slot centers: 40, 52, 64, 76, 88. Distance between two adjacent slots: 12 units. Dot radius: 2.2.

A row with n dots fills the first n slots from the left. Position 1 is occupied when n ≥ 1; position 5 only when n = 5. No centered or distributed dots. Zero dots means: the row is empty, not invisible.

Y coordinates of the three rows:

• Wortlaut: y = 36
• Geist: y = 50
• Beleg: y = 64

Beleg half-stroke

With beleg = 'belegt': no rendering. The row stays empty.

With beleg = 'ausstehend': a horizontal rectangle, right-aligned:

• From x = 70 to x = 92 (width 22 units)
• Centered on y = 64
• Height: 2.4

The stroke starts in the gap between slot 3 (x=64) and slot 4 (x=76), not under a dot. It ends 4 units past slot 5 (x=88) — symmetrical to the margin of the dots to the bracket.

The stroke weight is not thicker than the bracket, but equally weighted. So it does not dominate the notation.

Rendering rules

• fill="currentColor" for all elements. No fixed colors. The seal inherits its context’s text color.
• No stroke. All shapes are rendered as filled rectangles and circles.
• No gradients, shadows, filters, or effects.
• No frame around the seal, no background fill, no padding inside the viewBox.
• Scaling via CSS or the outer SVG attributes.
• No <title>, <desc>, no ARIA attributes in the SVG itself. Semantics are carried by the surrounding context.

Canonical states

A correctly generated seal must reproduce these outputs pixel-perfectly:

• The empty mark: buildSeal(0, 0, 'belegt') — two brackets, nothing between them.
• A middle mark: buildSeal(2, 3, 'belegt') — two dots top, three middle, no mark bottom.
• The full mark: buildSeal(5, 5, 'ausstehend') — both dot rows full, right-aligned half-stroke.

Reference implementation

A Python reference implementation that adheres to this spec exactly lives in the repo under siegel-generator/src/siegel.py. A ported JavaScript implementation for client-side live preview lives under static/js/live-preview.js.

What not to do

• No round brackets, no curly brackets, no angle brackets.
• No numbers or digits next to or instead of the dots.
• No equals sign, no separator line between rows.
• No frame (rectangle, circle, oval) around the seal.
• No vertical bar graphic, no star rating, no percent display.
• No decorative serifs on the glyph itself, no typographic embellishment, no texture.
• No color distinction between rows. Everything in currentColor.
• The Beleg half-stroke must not be centered or left-aligned. Right-alignment is part of the spec.

Version history

• v7 (2026-08-02): Axis vocabulary changed from D/G/K (Diktion, Geist, Korrespondenz) to W/G/B (Wortlaut, Geist, Beleg). Geometry unchanged; the binary values belegt/ausstehend unchanged. Geist keeps both its name and its letter. Asset filenames changed from d{D}-g{G}-{state}.svg to w{W}-g{G}-{state}.svg; the works/*.yaml field names changed from diktion/korrespondenz to wortlaut/beleg. Numeric values are unchanged, so a D 4 · G 2 declaration is a W 4 · G 2 declaration. The change makes the axes readable without a glossary (ADR 0032). This is a breaking change to the notation; the reference implementation keeps build_seal_v6() and build_seal_v5() shims, and the Hugo partial still accepts the v6 and v5 dict keys.
• v6 (2026-05-24): Axis vocabulary changed from F/S/V (Form, Substance, Verification) to D/G/K (Diktion, Geist, Correspondence). Binary K-axis values renamed from verified/unverified to belegt/ausstehend. Geometry unchanged. Geist is untranslated in English, analogous to Maschinenschrift. The shift reflects the move from a verification-language to a documentation-language (ADR 0008).
• v5 (2026-05-21): Verification marker changed from centered full-stroke (x=36..92, height 3.4) to right-aligned half-stroke (x=70..92, height 2.4). Axis vocabulary harmonized to F/S/V. Frozen historical record at /spec/siegel-v5/.
• v4: First version with full axis geometry. Verification marker as centered full-stroke. Axis vocabulary K/T/R — superseded by Foundation §7.
• v1–v3: Predecessors, discarded by v4.