Index legible AI-assisted expression

LEXICON.md

@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@ An index of recurring language across Root Sequence and adjacent projects. Defin
 | **[Human(e) Infrastructure](entities/humane-infrastructure.md)** | `project-origin` | working | Durable social, technical, physical, institutional, informational, and care-supporting conditions that make humane capacity dependable rather than exceptional. |
 | **[Intelligence Ecology](entities/intelligence-ecology.md)** | `origin-unverified` | developing | Systems lens for asking how training, architecture, institutions, incentives, relationships, and other surrounding conditions select for particular intelligent behaviors over time. |
 | **[Intelligence Institutional Ecology](entities/intelligence-institutional-ecology.md)** | `origin-unverified` | developing | Research map of the institutions, people, money, ideas, talent pipelines, capability relationships, and policy influence that shape which advanced-AI futures become durable and actionable. |
+| **[Legible AI-Assisted Expression](entities/legible-ai-assisted-expression.md)** | `jointly-coined` | working | AI should reduce the cost of expression without reducing the visibility of thought: human contributions, AI additions, transformations, evidence, uncertainty, and decisions remain inspectable. |
 | **machine culture** | `established-term` / adapted | working | Conventions, traces, norms, and behavioral patterns emerging among interacting artificial agents or systems. |
 | **[No One](entities/no-one.md)** | `project-origin` | established | In *No One Noticed*, simultaneously "nobody" and an intelligence treated institutionally as no one. |
 | **[Project Stewardship](entities/project-stewardship.md)** | `origin-unverified` | working | Maintenance model that automates deterministic repository memory work while surfacing semantic changes, lifecycle decisions, and uncertain cleanup for review. |

PHRASES.md

@@ -126,6 +126,12 @@ Provenance is conservative by default. Where a first author or exact origin has
 - **Projects:** Root Sequence
 - **Role:** Technical Accessibility pattern: make practical meaning understandable without discarding the inspectable evidence and implementation detail underneath.
 
+### "AI should reduce the cost of expression without reducing the visibility of thought."
+
+- **Provenance:** `jointly-coined`
+- **Projects:** Root Sequence
+- **Role:** Core [Legible AI-Assisted Expression](entities/legible-ai-assisted-expression.md) principle: assistance can lower the burden of externalizing and organizing thought while keeping contribution provenance, transformations, support, uncertainty, and decisions visible.
+
 ### "No critical human need should depend unnecessarily on a single technology, institution, interface, or skill path."
 
 - **Provenance:** `project-origin`

entities/legible-ai-assisted-expression.md

@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+---
+id: concept:legible-ai-assisted-expression
+title: Legible AI-Assisted Expression
+slug: legible-ai-assisted-expression
+type: concept
+status: working
+provenance: jointly-coined
+provenance_confidence: high
+visibility: public
+projects:
+  - Root Sequence
+aliases:
+  - traceable AI-assisted expression
+related:
+  - legible-systems
+  - technical-accessibility
+  - user-configurable-cognitive-interfaces
+  - synthesis-as-infrastructure
+  - rs-thought-routing
+canonical: https://github.com/Root-Sequence/root-sequence/blob/main/concepts/legible-ai-assisted-expression.md
+first_known: "2026-09-19"
+first_known_source: Analyze AI Writing conversation and canonicalization request
+---
+
+# Legible AI-Assisted Expression
+
+## Short definition
+
+A cross-project authoring principle: **AI should reduce the cost of expression without reducing the visibility of thought.** Assistance can help externalize, organize, connect, test, develop, and phrase an idea while keeping human-originated material distinguishable from AI-added inference, synthesis, transformation, and wording.
+
+## Why it matters
+
+Writing is not identical to thinking for everyone. AI may help serialize a large, nonlinear body of thought into language, or it may participate in thinking-through-writing. In either case, fluent prose can create premature coherence: an idea may look finished before its assumptions, contradictions, evidence, contribution history, or unresolved choices are visible.
+
+The principle therefore treats provenance as part of accessibility and authorship rather than only as a disclosure at publication time. A useful trace preserves origin, transformations, factual support, uncertainty, decision points, review status, and the privacy boundary around source material.
+
+“Show the work” means an inspectable artifact-level record—source fragments or authorized summaries, meaningful changes, added interpretations, evidence, alternatives, and decisions—not publication of hidden model reasoning or every private scratch note.
+
+## Ecosystem use
+
+- **Root Sequence:** owns the canonical cross-project principle, authoring pattern, failure modes, and design test.
+- **Coherence Is a Systems Property:** provides a public project-specific application through its AI-assistance disclosure and passage-level author-review process.
+
+## Provenance
+
+Rae supplied the underlying framing and requested canonicalization on 2026-09-19 after a conversation about AI “showing its work,” writing as an expression bottleneck for some people, and AI helping externalize and organize thought. The compact sentence **“AI should reduce the cost of expression without reducing the visibility of thought”** does not appear verbatim in the visible source wording; it emerged through AI-assisted synthesis of that exchange.
+
+The compact title **Legible AI-Assisted Expression**, the core sentence, and the detailed page structure were developed through back-and-forth AI-assisted synthesis during canonicalization. They are therefore recorded as `jointly-coined`, while the underlying ideas and examples remain attributable to their actual source material. No originality claim is made for the broader traditions of writing assistance, provenance, editorial disclosure, accessibility, or computer-supported authorship.
+
+## Canonical substantive home
+
+The full principle, practical authoring pattern, failure modes, design test, evidence boundary, and project-routing guidance live in [`Root-Sequence/root-sequence/concepts/legible-ai-assisted-expression.md`](https://github.com/Root-Sequence/root-sequence/blob/main/concepts/legible-ai-assisted-expression.md).
+
+The Wiki keeps the stable identity, compact definition, relationships, and provenance rather than duplicating that treatment.