Literate Modeling

Literate Modeling is the activity and method of describing subjects, purposes, situations, requirements, decisions, scenarios, intent, assumptions, history, and related information primarily in natural language and in an order and form people can understand, and organizing it as a Literate Model with explicit meanings, identities, and mappings to other Model elements.

The term extends to modeling the idea of Donald E. Knuth’s Literate Programming: treating a program and its explanation in one document and presenting them in an order that supports human understanding. Literate Modeling denotes the activity and method; a Literate Model denotes the subject and result described and organized through that activity.

In SimpleModeling, Literate Modeling relates natural-language information to Object and Knowledge Models and shares it among human developers, non-developers, and generative AI. Its important subjects include not only purpose-specific documents such as Vision statements and Use Cases, but also conventional documents that explain Domain Model concepts, rules, and relationships in natural language. An important use is supplying Use Case Scenarios directly to generative AI and connecting AI-proposed mappings to executable Models after human review and approval.

A CML (Cozy Modeling Language) document is a concrete practice of Literate Modeling because its formal elements express an executable Object Model while natural-language explanation, intent, and assumptions in the same document express Literate Model content. A complete Literate Model is not expected to be expressed in CML.