3 February 2026 · Taxonomy

The quiet violence of a messy event dictionary

An event name is a sentence. When two teams write two sentences for the same verb, every funnel becomes a crime scene.

We inherited a dictionary on a Kernel Residency that contained both checkout_started and begin_checkout, plus a third called tap_pay that fired on the same button as the first. Funnel Forensics students love this example because the “conversion” from item view to checkout exceeded 100 percent on Android and looked merely optimistic on iOS.

The iOS engineer had renamed in a release notes comment. The Android engineer had not read it. App Analytics faithfully recorded both truths. The dashboard, being a publication with no editor, printed a miracle.

Crash-free gets dragged in

Messy taxonomy is not only a funnel problem. If “session” is sometimes a process start and sometimes a first interactive frame, crash-free sessions become a costume. The healthier definition quietly drops the crashes that happen before paint. Executives see a green number. Users see a white screen.

Kernelhub’s rule is theatrical on purpose: if you cannot act the event name on a small stage, it does not ship. button_click_12 fails. save_receipt passes. Properties carry the object; the verb stays human.

Editing as operations

A dictionary is not a wiki you bless once. It is a weekly edit, like the Signal Ledger. Dead events are marked, not deleted, so old cohorts remain readable. New events require an owner and a sunset guess. This is boring. It is also how you stop paying for a warehouse full of synonyms.

The Event Taxonomy Lab is four weeks of this boredom with a red pen. It is less glamorous than retention and more responsible for the lies you currently believe.