The unwritten language of software projects
A codebase's real shared language isn't English or Python — it's the tacit understanding of concepts, boundaries, invariants, ownership, and why the system is shaped as it is.
This knowledge lives scattered across docs, code, reviews, and conversations. Before AI agents, friction enforced it: changing a storage layer meant reading code, asking questions, coordinating with dependent teams.
That slowness had waste, but also value — the process itself maintained shared understanding.