1. Principles

Built

Develop the world from its beginning to the present age (BWM, WT). Interconnection gives immersion and a semblance of realism.
Layers. An initial layer is established and the next is built on it: star → cloud → planets → moons and belts → clocks → geology → atmosphere → surface → hydrology → conditions for life → life → history of life (or created life) → peoples → states → realms and settlements → lore → languages and names. Each layer reads the ones below and writes nothing back to them. The order is now enforced by the framework (moduleOrder(), section 19).
Requirements. A system can develop only if its necessities are met. Life runs only where the conditions hold. Farming is found only on fertile ground. A technology is found only once its prerequisites are held. A sapient mind needs a body, a diet and a life that can pay for it.
Procedural and guided. With nothing given, everything comes from a seed. With presets and locks, the rest is generated around what was fixed, and the record says which is which (provenance). The same seed with the same options always gives the same result.
Designations, not words. The simulation identifies things by reference (S1.P3.C2.R7 for a place, B1.L17.Pδ for a population of a lineage). Names are given afterwards, by the peoples who live there, in their own languages.
Looked into on demand. The whole world is known coarsely, and detail is made only where it is wanted.
Judgements are marked. Every specification separates what is measured or derived from physics from what is a judgement.
Data, not code. Traits, niches, coevolution pairs, technologies, races, religion, magic, law, beings, sound laws, body plans, naming styles, climate bands, game profiles, variants and message catalogues are JSON files.