Dotabase Operation Manual (DBOM)

A Dotabase Operation Manual — DBOM — is the operator-authored guidance attached to a Dotabase that says how knowledge is meant to be stored and read there. It exists so a Dotabase carries its own instructions instead of relying on an agent's memory or on convention.

A manual has two layers, and they reach a reader differently.

The trailer is short and automatic. A stated purpose and an authority scope ride along on CLI reads and writes as a --- DBOM --- block, so an agent that fetched one row has already been told what the Dotabase is for.

The judgment layer is fuller and is pulled deliberately: pass the global --manual flag to expand the trailer, or read the whole manual with dots dbom show, which takes a Dotabase id or slug and also reports the schema digest and any pending judgment proposal. dots dbom update edits the purpose and the judgment; dots dbom approve accepts a staleness-drafted proposal.

A manual's authority is deliberately narrow, and every trailer states it: a manual governs storage in its own Dotabase only — never cross-Dotabase actions, never deletions — and the schema wins on any conflict.

Consult the manual before a non-trivial write, so the row lands shaped the way that Dotabase expects. It grounds a decision; it is not output, and an agent does not echo manual text back to the person it is working for.