Colophon for short works

Created
· Expires 2026-10-06 14:47 · 260708-hs

Colophon for short works

As we prepare publishable short works, we need a colophon that carries things such as:

  • authors and contributors
  • copyright and license
  • provenance
  • tools used
  • fonts
  • build date/version
  • source repository
  • acknowledgments

This document describes the colophon shape for things written by Pete or Pete+agent dyad.

Generally, the colophon should be at the top of the work, under the title H1, and under metadata (YAML frontmatter, Wilderness predicates).

Follow the colophon with a horizontal rule (---) to seam it off from the body. (A one-line terse colophon that already reads as a caption can skip the rule if a divider would be heavier than the colophon itself — use judgment.)

Confirm with Pete the choices you make as you assemble the colophon. Some works can get away with a single-line colophon; some need multi-line colophons. Multiple-line colophons in Markdown should have trailing line-break formatting (two spaces) on every line except the final line.

Strive for elegance and beautiful placement, to the extent possible.

Identity of the work

especially important for multi-file works

"part of (projectname) (version)"

Version may take different shapes:

  • terse, non-semver: v1, v1.1
  • semver: v2.5.4
  • date: 2026-07-02

For some fiction, a word count is appropriate.

Dedication, rights statement

Two legal pieces and one cultural piece:

  • Copyright notice — © <year> Peter Kaminski. The "dated" in "dated CC-BY dedication" is the year, and only the year — this is the one authoritative place the year lives.
  • License notice — CC-BY 4.0; spell out Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International where there's room, and make it a link in HTML/web contexts.
  • Copyheart dedication — ♡ Copying is an act of love. Please copy and share.

Combine copyright and license into one unit — © <year> Peter Kaminski · CC-BY 4.0. That unit is "the CC-BY dedication" the ordering rules below refer to.

On the date — don't duplicate it. The rights statement is dated by year, never by a fuller date. Longer dates (a full ISO build date, a date-as-version) are identity/build metadata and live in those lines, doing a different job. The year in © 2026 and a build date 2026-07-02 share digits but not purpose, and that overlap is fine — not the duplication to avoid. What to avoid is an unnecessary second date: don't float a bare year next to the version (… v1, 2026 …) when © 2026 already carries it, and don't spell a full date inside the rights line. One authoritative year, in the copyright notice.

Escape hatch: when a fully-dated line (build date or date-as-version) sits immediately adjacent to the rights line, you may drop the year from the notice — © Peter Kaminski · CC-BY 4.0 — and let the neighbor supply it. Elegant when the date is already loud; but the always-safe default is to keep the year in the © notice.

Ordering — the copyright/license unit relative to the copyheart line:

  • On one line, the CC-BY dedication comes first, copyheart second.
  • On two lines, the copyheart comes first, CC-BY dedication second.

Attribution

"Written by $agent $codename ($modelname_and_version), directed by Peter Kaminski"

$codename may be blank or a bg codename

Examples

Very terse — single line

For multi-file works where every file carries the line (e.g. the Conlangs bundle). Italic, sits under the H1. Year appears once, in the ©; the version is bare (v1, no trailing year); CC-BY before copyheart (one-line rule).

*Part of Conlangs as Tools v1. © 2026 Peter Kaminski · CC-BY 4.0. ♡ Copying is an act of love. Please copy and share.*

Normal — multi-line

Hard breaks (trailing two spaces) on every line but the last. Copyheart before the CC-BY line (two-line rule). The year lives once, in the © notice; no separate build date is needed here.

5,551 words. Part of After the Cloud.  
Written by Freya (Opus 4.8), directed by Peter Kaminski.  
♡ Copying is an act of love. Please copy and share.  
© 2026 Peter Kaminski · CC-BY 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International)

---

(body begins here)

With a build date or dated edition

When the work genuinely needs a full date (a reproducible build, a dated edition), let that date carry the year and drop it from the © notice — so the year isn't printed twice. Also shows a bg codename in the attribution.

Part of After the Cloud — edition 2026-07-02.  
Written by Freya bg-mistral (Opus 4.8), directed by Peter Kaminski.  
♡ Copying is an act of love. Please copy and share.  
© Peter Kaminski · CC-BY 4.0

---

(body begins here)