# `knowledge/` in this checkout

The plant layer and the job layer are not here — never were, never will be
in a colleague distribution. `catalogue.yaml` **is** here, but it is a
**carve-out**, not the owner's real file: `tools/make_dist.py`'s
`build_catalogue_carveout()` reads the real one and re-emits only the
branches that are trade-standard or that are this tool's own built-in
configuration, never a manufacturer's product rating. Read the header at
the top of `catalogue.yaml` itself for the exact list of what's in and
what's out, and why. `catalogue.yaml.template` is a separate thing: a
blank-value authoring template for building a real knowledge layer from
scratch, not what this carve-out is built from.

## Why

WillTools reads its facts in layers, each overriding the one before it:

| layer | where | what it is |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `knowledge.DEFAULTS` | in the code | what the tool assumes when nobody has said |
| `knowledge/catalogue.yaml` | here, carved out | published hardware ratings — manufacturer data |
| plant layer | `%APPDATA%\WillTools\knowledge.yaml` | one office's naming conventions, casting-bed rails, parameter names |
| job layer | `<model folder>/_ticketqc/knowledge.yaml` | what this job does differently |
| project config | wherever the engineer put it | the pinned, merged answer for one job |

The plant and job layers, and `catalogue-rationale.md`, are either a
specific office's private template or narrate real measured incidents —
neither belongs in a colleague trial. The catalogue's two real capacity
tables (`catalogue.inserts`, `connectors.products`) ship **empty** for the
same reason a manufacturer's rating is not this tool's to redistribute.
Ask whoever gave you this checkout for the real layers, and the real
catalogue, once you are ready to point the tools at a real job.

## What runs without the missing pieces

Everything that does not need a lookup: unit conversion, the ribbon itself,
Self Check, and — outside Revit entirely — `panellift`'s handling
calculations, which read a frozen job file and never touch `knowledge/` at
all (see `examples/example-panel.job.json`).

Everything the shipped carve-out covers also runs for real: face
designations, the up-end orientation rule, ASTM rebar grades, and the whole
shop-ticket QC checklist (row ids, grades, which check answers which row) —
none of that needs the real, private file. What stands down cleanly is only
what actually needs a manufacturer's number: a lifting insert's rated
capacity, a sandwich-wall tie's rated capacity, and anything downstream of
either.  `python tools/setup_machine.py --check` reports this state as a
pass, not a failure — a distribution with the carve-out and no product
data is an expected, first-class state, not a broken one. Self Check
reports the same thing inside Revit, row by row.

### Running the test suites here

`CONTRIBUTING.md`'s "What does not run in a trial install" has the full
accounting. Short version: both suites' `tests/conftest.py` carries an
appended, auto-detecting block (written by `tools/make_dist.py`'s
`append_test_exclusions()`) that skips, by name and with a reason, the
handful of tests that assert the owner's real published numbers rather
than this tool's logic. Drop in the real `knowledge/catalogue.yaml` and
those tests un-skip on their own — nothing to edit.

## Getting real knowledge layers

Ask the owner. They come from a second, private repository that is not part
of this one on purpose — see the top of `.gitignore` in the repo root for
why the split exists at all.