Lens queries

A lens is a query over the tracked entries: a short list of facet values, and an entry is shown when its own record carries every one of them. The query is printed in full wherever a lens is applied, so what was selected and by what test can be read off the address itself.

From 2026-09-08 this address listed 5 named bundles. They were retired on 2026-09-26: each address that was published answers as a dated retirement page, and the list is at the foot of this page. A bundle began with a name and then looked for a rule to fit it; a lens is the rule, with no name in front of it.

The query, piece by piece

A term

facet:value — one of the 5 facet keys below, then :, then a value that facet carries, case included, percent-encoded as the Encoding row below describes. The column headed “In a query” in the facet tables prints each value in that encoded form. A value no entry carries is not a term the board can apply.

Several terms

joined by ,, at most 2 of them. They compose by conjunction: an entry missing any one of them is not shown.

One value per facet

two values of one facet do not stack. The board’s chips substitute within a facet, and a query naming two values of the same facet describes a view no control can produce, so the board refuses it.

Encoding

each value is percent-encoded the way encodeURIComponent encodes it, so a , or a : inside a value cannot split the term it belongs to, and a space is written %20. 20 of the 53 values below change when encoded.

On a page

the query follows #lens= in the fragment: /#lens=facet:value. The fragment is the one part of an address a browser never sends, so a lens opened from a link narrows the page inside that browser and nothing about it reaches a server. The board, changes and the calendar also read the query-string form described next: one of those three addresses carrying ?lens= and a query it can read opens narrowed, and where an address carries both forms the fragment is the one read. A control on those pages writes a lens into the fragment and never into the query string.

On a machine surface

the same query is written after ?lens= in the query string. This deployment serves static files, so the query reaches nothing that could apply it: the document comes back whole, and it publishes the vocabulary and each row’s facet values so the same query can be applied to those bytes by whatever received them. The worked read Sources by lens, on Developers, carries an example of this form.

The older shorthand

#v- followed by a verification state is read as a single verification term, which is what it meant before the query existed. The board’s verification split links it: each state’s count there is a link to that fragment, which is also the id of that state’s line in the legend, and following one narrows the board to that state. The chips write a lens in the #lens= form and never in this one.

What the board does with a query it cannot read

a facet this record files no entries under, a facet this record files entries under and the page does not, a value nothing on the page carries, a term that is not a facet and a value, a value whose percent escape does not decode, two values of one facet, or more than 2 terms. The board prints a refusal, applies none of the query, and is left whole. For each of these but the last the refusal names the part it could not read; an escape that does not decode and two values of one facet are named in the words it uses for a term that is not a facet and a value. For more than 2 terms it states how many the address composes. Part of a query is never applied as though it were all of it.

The facets, and the values each one carries today

Read from the 132 tracked entries on this build, through the function the machine surfaces publish their vocabulary from: 53 values across 5 facets. Values are listed alphabetically — not by count — and the count beside each is how many tracked entries carry it, which is what a single-term lens on that value would show on the board.

verification — Verification

status — Status

jurisdiction — Jurisdiction

subject — Subject (as stated)

class — Class (as stated)

A value that states an absence — a title stating no subject, or no class — is a value like any other, and a lens can select on it. It is the epistemic fact about what a reading found, and never a bucket for everything the named values missed.

Where a lens is read

• The board — a row is a tracked entry, so a term is a fact about the row itself.
• Changes and the calendar — a row there names a tracked entry rather than being one, so a term is a fact about the entry named, as this record holds it today, and not about the row or the day the row records. The calendar files no row under verification, and states why on its own page.
• The machine surfaces — the query string, applied by whatever receives the document, as above.

A lens over pages kept in this browser

The local shelf writes queries in the same grammar over a different list: the pages kept on one device, by a control pressed in that browser. It narrows by 2 facets of its own — section (section of the site) and day (day it was kept) — with the same : between a facet and its value, the same , between terms and the same cap of 2, read from one declaration rather than respelled. It prints the query in full beside the count it is showing. None of its facets is one the board reads, so a board lens cannot be composed there: the two share a grammar and not a vocabulary.

It is never written to the address bar. A lens over a list only one browser holds could not be opened by anyone the address was sent to, which is the opposite of the board’s lens and the reason that one lives in the URL. What it stores, the act that writes each key, and the control that clears them are listed beside it.

The document-type layer

A layer here is what a publisher said its own document is, or what a stated rule read from the publisher’s own designation. Nothing on this page assigns a layer to a document whose publisher did not.

47 of 132 row(s) carry a publisher’s own class statement; 4 are read from a designation by the rule; 81 state none.

The rule, in full

• Regulation — the designation begins with the European Union’s own instrument word
• Directive — the designation begins with the European Union’s own instrument word
• Decision — the designation begins with the European Union’s own instrument word
• Code of Federal Regulations — the citation form is the publisher’s own code title

THE RULE IS ANCHORED TO THE START OF THE DESIGNATION. Unanchored it matched an entry whose title cross-references a different instrument, and read that other instrument’s class as this document’s. A citation of someone else’s designation is not a statement about this one.

Standards-body prefixes are deliberately outside the rule. A designation like ISO 13485 carries no class word, so a layer read from it would come from this record rather than from its publisher. Where those publishers state a class they are in the first row of the table already.

Named in the order that asked for this view, with no member in this corpus: law, regulator, standard, industry practice. The values above are the publishers’ own words and are not mapped onto those names.

The named bundles, retired on 2026-09-26

The 5 phrases come from the filed order of 2026-09-07 and are listed in the sequence that order names them. Each word of a phrase entered its rule only where it was verbatim a value the corpus carried on one of the board’s facets. Every figure below is as the bundle pages printed it before the retirement — read from build 4aea92e7296f of 2026-09-26, made from commit a302fa0d9, before the build that replaced them, and counted against the 132 entries this record tracked on that build. It is a rendering of that commit and not a copy of the bytes served to readers. The bundles were first built on 2026-09-08 (commit 984d1847d).

On that build 6 value(s) resolved across all 5 names: the 5 names held 5 rule term(s) between them, and the 2 names that never became a rule held 1 part(s) that did resolve, which no rule held. Each rule term and each resolved part was carried by at least one tracked entry. 3 of the 5 had a page, and 2 of those 3 rules could be written as a board lens. None is offered as one here: a retired name in front of a live lens of its rule would keep the grouping the retirement ends standing, under the same name. The rule of manufacturing validation could not be written as one, and its retirement page keeps the reason the bundle page gave.

The names no rule reached

2 of the 5 names never became a rule at all: AI in biopharma and OT cybersecurity. Each carried a word that is not a value this corpus carried on any facet, so nothing could be selected under it and none ever had an address. Each of the 5 began as a name, and a rule was then sought for it; for these 2 none could be built. A lens carries no name in front of its query — the query is the whole of it.

Nothing was measured under these names, and that is not a finding that no tracked entry answers to them. It is a fact about the vocabulary this record holds, not about the documents: entries answering to those names may well be tracked here, and no reading has looked for them.

No word of a name was translated into another to make it resolve. Two strings that a reader might take to mean one thing are still two strings, and deciding otherwise would be this record authoring the grouping a second time. The correction recording the retirement is on corrections.

Last updated: 2 November 2026