How to cite and share the work

Suggested citation#

van der Merwe, Llewellyn. Vast Development Method Theory: Contextual Recollection, Staged Synthesis, and Persistent Editorial Reconciliation. Version 0.1.0. Vast Development Method, 2026. https://theory.vdm.io.

When historical provenance matters, add: “Historical public implementation: Joomla Component Builder, root commit ecf47809f960bd057af8a414168fada6fe22c5f7, 30 January 2016.” Do not replace the manuscript year with 2016.

Cite the object being discussed#

For a definition or proposition, cite this edition and the focused article or heading. For behavior of JCB, cite the pinned source path and commit. For inherited mathematical or architectural concepts, cite the relevant original work in the bibliography.

A citation to the theory cannot substitute for evidence that a particular implementation satisfies its assumptions. Similarly, a source citation cannot by itself establish the validity of a psychological hypothesis.

Machine-readable citation#

The repository includes CITATION.cff, with the author's name, work title, edition, publication URL, repository, and license identifiers. It contains no invented ORCID, DOI, academic affiliation, or degree.

A DOI may be added if a future release is deposited with an appropriate archive. Until then, cite the version and repository commit for a reproducible reference.

Sharing one article#

Each article has a canonical HTML URL and a same-origin raw Markdown alternate. The page toolbar provides both reading and download actions. The raw file is the exact Markdown source used for that page, including its front matter; it is not a separately maintained summary.

For example, the formal state model is published as /semantics/state-space/ and its Markdown as /markdown/semantics/state-space.md. Relative links between Markdown articles remain within the corresponding Markdown hierarchy.

Sharing the whole edition#

The build provides a complete Markdown corpus, a Markdown archive, an article manifest, and llms.txt / llms-full.txt discovery surfaces. The manifest records the SHA-256 digest of each article's source bytes. This supports checking whether a shared copy matches a particular build.

Hashes identify bytes, not scholarly quality or authorship by themselves. Retain the author, title, version, source URL, and license when redistributing the work.

Adaptations and quotations#

Mark an adaptation as adapted, identify its author, and preserve appropriate attribution to the original. Do not imply that Llewellyn or VDM reviewed or endorsed changes they have not approved. Third-party quotations and source code retain their own rights; the paper's CC BY license does not automatically apply to them.

See licensing for the exact scope and the controlling legal-code link.