Originally written in French. Translated by AI — the meaning has been preserved, not the prose.
Short definition
The zone of a Contexte that carries what durably governs the work — the mission, the directives, the loading rules, and the production rules binding on future actions.
Full definition
In project management, a frame ordinarily designates the perimeter and the assumptions within which a decision is taken.
In the articles on this blog, it names a precise zone, materialised by a 00-frame/ folder at the head of a Contexte, and it is defined by contrast with the others: the state says where the work stands, the sources keep what has been received, the notes stabilise what we understand of it, the deliverables hold what we produce for a use and a recipient.
Layer brought by "The day the AI taught me something about my own system" (2026-09-22). The term was first used to designate the stable part, the one defined at the outset that hardly ever changes. The sense retained is now functional rather than rhythmic: the Frame carries what durably governs, including a rule discovered and validated in the course of the work. It isn't immobile, it is constitutional — it changes when the Contexte's working contract changes, not at the pace of daily activity.
Usage in the field
Used to say where a document belongs when it produces no result but determines how the next results will be produced — a translation guide, an editorial charter, a naming convention. Used too to refuse entry to what isn't binding yet: a hesitation, a local hypothesis, a point of attention.
Synonyms and variants
"the frame", in more everyday usage; "00-frame", when the reference is to the folder itself.
Not to be confused with
- Mission — the goal pursued within a
Contexte. The mission is one of the Frame's contents, it doesn't exhaust its perimeter. - Directive — a processing rule encoding a way of working. It is the Frame's typical content, except that a directive is ordinarily written in advance, whereas the Frame also takes in what was settled along the way.
- Focus — the attention of the moment, what is being worked on today. It belongs to the state of the work, never to the Frame.
- Deliverable — an output aimed at an audience and a use. The Frame governs the production of deliverables without ever being one.
Examples
A translation guide written during the English rereading of a book: it is neither a chapter, nor a translation, nor an appendix, and it fixes the criteria every subsequent translation will have to apply. It goes in 00-frame/, not next to the manuscript it talks about.
Conversely, a lexicon of difficult words — matière, acquis, dette, arbitrage, reprise — stays outside the Frame as long as its entries are hesitations; only settled choices move up into it.
Ambiguities / debates
The old sense — the zone of what doesn't change — is still in circulation, and the two readings don't classify the same files. The disagreement is real: the rate-of-change reading is easier to apply, the function reading is the only one that correctly files a document born late and already governing.
The boundary also remains debated for documents with a dual status, which hold both settled choices and ongoing hypotheses.