THE REFERENCE DESK · 3.0 CANDIDATE

CITE THE VERSION, NOT THE SITE

A specification that changes underneath you is a specification nobody can cite. The version is the object: it has an author, a date, a canonical URL, and a status only the Record can move. Take the reference below, in whichever form your bibliography speaks.

How do I cite VINDEX3?

Cite the version, not the website: VINDEX3 Specification, Version 3.0 Candidate, by Chris Hay, first published 30 August 2026 at vindex3.org/3.0. That URL is durable — 3.1 will be published as a different object rather than as a silent edit of this one. The reference is below in plain text, BibTeX, APA and CSL-JSON, and every chapter of this site carries the same four surfaces: a provenance line, a reference, citation tags in the head, and JSON-LD in the graph.

PUBLISHED 30 AUG 2026 · REVISED 31 AUG 2026 · VERSION 3.0 Candidate

CITE

site build 43a1b6b · built 2026-09-02 · graph schema 6 · specification vindex3-format-spec.md · reference implementation github.com/chrishayuk/larql

THE CANONICAL REFERENCE

Specification · 3.0 Candidate

Hay, C. (2026). VINDEX3 Specification (Version 3.0 Candidate). VINDEX3. https://vindex3.org/3.0

Four surfaces, one record. What you copy here is what this site declares in its head tags and in its structured data — the reference cannot drift from the page, because neither of them is written by hand.

A claim that cannot be dated is a claim that cannot be defended.

NO DOI — AND THE REFERENCE IS STILL COMPLETE

No DOI has been registered for 3.0, so none appears above. An identifier that does not exist is absent here rather than promised: a reference carrying an author, a version, a first-publication date and a canonical URL is enough for a bibliography to resolve, and enough for a reader to check what was said and when. If a registered identifier is ever minted for a version, it joins the record and appears in all four places at once.

CITABLE CHAPTERS — EACH WITH ITS OWN REFERENCE

The Physics →What a model is made of, why it is hard to move, and why the file format is where the battle is actually fought.29 AUG 2026 · REV 30 AUG 2026 The Anatomy →A layer, cut open: query, key, value, gate, up and down projections, residual streams, experts and routers — and one address, all the way down.29 AUG 2026 · REV 30 AUG 2026 Quantization →How quantization actually works: BF16, NVFP4, shared scales, effective bits per weight, mixed precision, precision maps, and measured quality.30 AUG 2026 · REV 31 AUG 2026 Discovering the Map →Four pre-registered attempts to discover automatically which tensors deserve higher precision — and what each of them disproved.30 AUG 2026 · REV 31 AUG 2026 REPRESENT →Behaviour-contract search: declare the behaviour to preserve rather than choosing a quantization, and let the optimizer find the representation that holds it.31 AUG 2026 The Container →Every layer of a container, explained — one directory, one root, the canonical graph shape and the five durable weight classes.29 AUG 2026 · REV 30 AUG 2026 The System Graph →Components, logical objects and edges — the semantic IR a container carries, and how it is materialised.29 AUG 2026 · REV 30 AUG 2026 The Bytes →LYRW v2, the layer-weight binary format, explained to the byte — header, banks, segments, region schemas, entry table.29 AUG 2026 · REV 30 AUG 2026 Execution →The execution surface, operand closure and the compiler boundary — how an encoded description becomes computation with zero architecture branches.29 AUG 2026 · REV 31 AUG 2026 Representation →Region-set variants, the eligibility policy and the promotion ladder — selection, not conversion.29 AUG 2026 · REV 30 AUG 2026 Authority →The four-authority invariant and the derived-authority fold — where truth comes from inside a container.29 AUG 2026 · REV 30 AUG 2026 The Lifecycle →What a container can do over its life — bind, query, execute, trace, overlay, diff, compile, compact — and the guarantee each operation carries.30 AUG 2026 The Record →The status instrument: the guarantees ladder, the gate ladders, the measured evidence, the history and the open questions, kept honestly in one place.29 AUG 2026 · REV 31 AUG 2026

Each chapter belongs to the specification it appeared in, so its reference names both: the chapter, then the version. The Explorer, Ask and the on-ramp carry no reference — they are instruments, and citing an instrument cites nothing.

Can I cite a single chapter rather than the whole specification?

Yes. Every chapter listed above carries its own reference at the foot of the page, naming the chapter, its first publication date, and the specification version it belongs to — for example: Hay, C. (2026). The Bytes. In VINDEX3 Specification (Version 3.0 Candidate). VINDEX3. https://vindex3.org/bytes. Chapter dates are first-publication dates; a substantive revision sets a separate revised date and never quietly moves the original.

The version itself, with the six claims and the gates that remain — and the Record every date here answers to.

FOLLOW THIS IDEA — 3.0 — VERSION & STATUS →FOLLOW THIS IDEA — THE RECORD →FOLLOW THIS IDEA — RUN IT YOURSELF →