# Patterns for Preserving Meaning WinMedia Research - Working guide v0.1 - October 30, 2026 Six working patterns from Foundations of Mandala Intelligence for authors, editors, researchers, and builders who maintain source-based work. ## Current status v0.1 Working draft. The six cards offer human-use guidance adapted from detailed specifications. The catalogue’s 53 acceptance cases have been specified but have not been run against implementations of these specifications. Related methods and bounded implementations informed the work; they do not establish conformance to this version, independent reuse, or general benefit. The cards and working guide do not certify a document or authorize its publication. ## Overview A source becomes a passage. A passage becomes a brief, a presentation, or a software response. Each change creates useful possibilities: a different audience can find what it needs, and complex material can become easier to navigate. Each change also raises practical questions. Which source version was used? Did an important condition disappear? Who reviewed the result? What needs attention when the source changes? This working catalogue draws on the six books in Foundations of Mandala Intelligence. It organizes sixteen pattern families and develops six into detailed specifications. A design pattern describes a recurring problem, an approach to handling it, and the conditions and costs that matter. These six can inform an ordinary editorial process as well as software. You can explore them without adopting the entire series or building a new system. The cards below begin with separate judgments about evidence, review, and permission. They then follow a piece of work through source identification, views at different levels of detail, recorded transformations, meaningful relationships, and review after a change. Together, they offer a way to ask more precise questions about what a document says and what supports it. One fictional example runs through the cards: a note reports that a guide helped readers find references in a supervised exercise; unsupervised use was not assessed. A brief and a detailed explanation draw on that note. Later, its author withdraws it pending a method review. The example illustrates the proposed handling of meaning and dependencies. It is not a study result or a demonstration of measured improvement. Start with one passage you already maintain. Use the working guide to record its source, draft a shorter view, and inspect what changes. Keep the effort proportionate to the task. The next research step is to test whether these practices improve real work enough to justify their added effort. ## How to use this guide 1. Choose one source-backed passage, its intended reader, and a real task. Keep the exact source version available where access permits; record any limits on inspection. 2. Use the relevant cards to make a brief and a detailed view. Check the claims, conditions, additions, and omissions against the source. Record what remains uncertain and which judgments were actually made. 3. Introduce a source correction or withdrawal as a clearly labeled exercise. Trace the work that needs review, then compare the result and effort with your usual process. Keep hypothetical findings separate from live changes. ## FMI-P02 Keep the judgments separate **Problem:** A document can pass a format check, cite a source, or carry an “approved” label while important questions about its content or use remain open. **Approach:** Record distinct answers: Is this the expected content? Does it follow the stated rules? What evidence supports its claims? What review occurred? What action is permitted? Tie each answer to the version and use it actually covers. Reuse existing permission when it applies; a new check does not automatically require new approval. **Fictional example:** The fictional brief has a valid structure and a source link. Those checks do not establish that its wording preserves the supervision condition. A content review is still needed, and permission to publish must come from an applicable decision. **Cost and limitation:** Separate records add effort. Use enough detail to prevent one judgment from silently standing in for another. **Current status:** v0.1 Working draft. This card is short guidance from a fuller specification, not a conformance test or evidence of benefit. **Still to validate:** Test whether people preserve these distinctions when they actually share, publish, or act, and whether the process causes unnecessary delays. Source emphasis: The Mandala Protocol; The Sanskrit Mandala Model; Universal Knowledge Mandala; Structured Resolution-Oriented Writing. ## FMI-P01 Keep sources and versions identifiable **Problem:** A filename or web address may stay the same while its contents change. A copied excerpt can lose its origin, context, and relationship to later versions. **Approach:** Identify the continuing work and the exact version used. Give a materially different summary or explanation its own identity, and record its direct source and relevant location. Keep older relationships recoverable. If a source is missing, restricted, or ambiguous, record that limitation rather than substituting the latest available text. **Fictional example:** The brief names the fictional note’s first version as its source. When that note is withdrawn, the brief still records what it was based on. A revised note does not silently become the source of the old brief. **Cost and limitation:** Version records and useful locators need upkeep. Retain enough context for inspection without copying restricted material into a new audience’s view. **Current status:** v0.1 Working draft. This card is short guidance from a fuller specification, not a conformance test or evidence of benefit. **Still to validate:** Ask another reader to recover the correct source and context after a handoff, including when an old source is unavailable. Source emphasis: The Mandala Protocol; Structured Resolution-Oriented Writing; Big Net. ## FMI-P03 Share a base vary the detail **Problem:** A brief and a detailed explanation can drift into different claims. A crucial condition may survive in an appendix while disappearing from the reader’s decision. **Approach:** Maintain a shared, versioned account of the claims, evidence, qualifications, and unresolved questions. Derive views for particular audiences and levels of detail. Keep any condition that could change a reader’s conclusion beside the relevant claim, or withhold that conclusion. Identify which base each view uses; updates require deliberate review and regeneration. **Fictional example:** Both fictional views retain that the reference-finding benefit was observed under supervision and that unsupervised use was not assessed. The brief can be shorter without becoming the broader claim “The guide helps readers find references.” **Cost and limitation:** Maintaining the shared account and checking each view costs time. The arrangement is most useful when several views will be maintained. **Current status:** v0.1 Working draft. This card is short guidance from a fuller specification, not a conformance test or evidence of benefit. **Still to validate:** Check meaning with readers and reviewers. Test whether the arrangement improves comprehension and maintenance compared with a well-prepared ordinary report. Source emphasis: Structured Resolution-Oriented Writing; Universal Knowledge Mandala. ## FMI-P04 Record changes and possible loss **Problem:** Shortening, translating, or expanding a passage can alter meaning. A statement that “nothing important was lost” may reflect the writer’s intention rather than an inspected result. **Approach:** Record the source and result, what was preserved, changed, omitted, or added, and what remains unknown. Distinguish the maker’s declaration from a separate assessment of meaning. Mark generated explanations as additions. Inspect the result against its sources; complete records alone cannot reveal every hidden omission. **Fictional example:** The fictional brief keeps the supervision condition and the limit on unsupervised use. Its maker declares that only wording was shortened; a reviewer still checks that judgment. If an explanation adds a reason the guide worked, label it as an inference unless the source supplies it. **Cost and limitation:** Detailed mapping and review can become burdensome. Focus on changes that could affect the intended reader’s conclusion or action. **Current status:** v0.1 Working draft. This card is short guidance from a fuller specification, not a conformance test or evidence of benefit. **Still to validate:** Test whether reviewers detect undeclared changes and omissions, including plausible additions, while measuring review effort and false alarms. Source emphasis: Structured Resolution-Oriented Writing; The Sanskrit Mandala Model; Universal Knowledge Mandala. ## FMI-P06 Say what each relationship means **Problem:** A link can mean “draws on,” “discusses,” “contradicts,” or “permits.” Treating every connection alike can turn an association into apparent evidence or authority. **Approach:** Name the relationship, identify the exact versions it connects, and state its direction, scope, conditions, and who asserted it. Define what the relationship allows you to infer or do in the intended task. Keep historical derivation distinct from current support. Keep unknowns visible and state any conditions that remain unmet. **Fictional example:** The fictional brief depends on the note for its reported benefit and limitation. A separate commentary merely discusses the note. After withdrawal, the dependency still explains the brief’s origin, but the withdrawn note is no longer eligible as current support. The commentary link does not restore that support. **Cost and limitation:** A useful vocabulary takes care to define and maintain. Prefer a few clear relationships over many poorly distinguished labels. **Current status:** v0.1 Working draft. This card is short guidance from a fuller specification, not a conformance test or evidence of benefit. **Still to validate:** Test whether different users interpret relationships consistently and follow the correct direction and conditions when using them. Source emphasis: Big Net; Universal Knowledge Mandala; The Mandala Protocol. ## FMI-P07 Trace what a change puts under review **Problem:** When a source changes, its influence may persist in passages and summaries. Deleting old links can erase the very trail needed to find them. **Approach:** Retain relevant history and follow recorded dependencies to work that may need review. Show a reason and an inspectable path for each result. State what was searched, inaccessible, missing, or outside the search. A review list proposes attention; it does not decide corrections or authorize publication. **Fictional example:** Withdrawing the fictional note puts the brief and detailed explanation under review through their recorded dependencies. The withdrawal does not prove every sentence false. Unlinked external copies may be missed; the result’s coverage remains limited. **Cost and limitation:** The result depends on the quality and coverage of maintained links. Creating those links may cost more than manual review for a small, one-off task. **Current status:** v0.1 Working draft. This card is short guidance from a fuller specification, not a conformance test or evidence of benefit. **Still to validate:** Test deliberately missing links and real source changes. Measure missed work, unnecessary review, and total correction effort against an ordinary editorial process. Source emphasis: Big Net; Structured Resolution-Oriented Writing; The Mandala of Mandalas. ## Validation limits - The catalogue contains sixteen families. Six have working specifications with 81 proposed requirements and 53 acceptance cases. Those cases have not been executed against implementations of these specifications. - Related methods, bounded code paths and internal trials informed the design. No implementation is asserted to conform to the full new specifications, and independent reuse or general user benefit has not been established. - Checking fields, references, hashes or declared loss flags can inspect recorded conditions. It cannot by itself establish that a passage is true, preserves every material qualification, or is authorized for use. - The examples in this guide are fictional. Source withdrawal triggers scoped review; it does not automatically refute dependent claims. Missing links limit any claim about what a change affects. - The short cards are practical introductions to the fuller specifications. This guide does not include an executable conformance suite, certify a document, or grant permission to publish it. The next step is a bounded implementation trial, followed by independent use. Compare with a competent ordinary workflow, retain failures and disagreements, and measure preparation, annotation and review effort as well as mistakes. A finding about one task or encoding applies only to the tested scope. ## Series sources A practical synthesis of the Foundations of Mandala Intelligence books by Lynn Walker, published by WinMedia. The catalogue adds implementation-neutral requirements and functional crosswalks; it is not a verbatim book standard or a claim that the underlying mechanisms are new. Traditional source concepts retain their wider meanings. - [The Sanskrit Mandala Model](https://winmedia.com/publications/sanskrit-mandala-model). - [Universal Knowledge Mandala](https://winmedia.com/publications/universal-knowledge-mandala). - [The Mandala Protocol](https://winmedia.com/publications/mandala-protocols). - [Big Net](https://winmedia.com/publications/big-net). - [The Mandala of Mandalas](https://winmedia.com/publications/the-mandala-of-mandalas). - [Structured Resolution-Oriented Writing](https://winmedia.com/publications/srow). Prepared with AI-assisted synthesis and editorial review. Version 0.1 is a working draft for examination and trial; publication status and validation status remain distinct. Version 0.1 - first working edition, October 30, 2026. This edition introduces six cards, one fictional example and the current validation limits. Retain version and date when referring to this guide.