The Universal Concept Layer: Language as Versionable Code — A Meaning Layer between Humans, Language Models, Agents, and Robots

Abstract

Bilingual working paper (English / German) — the English version is the citation version; the German version is identical in substance and included in this record. Infrastructure for systems combining humans, language models, agents and robots is being standardised rapidly: transport, tool invocation, identity, capability description. One layer goes systematically unaddressed, and not by oversight. The classical agent communication languages reserved a placeholder for it — a message field pointing to an ontology. What was specified is the reference, not the lifecycle of what is referenced. This paper proposes filling that placeholder rather than setting it again. It argues that the layer of meaning forms a distinct layer of system architecture, the Universal Concept Layer, and that its carrier material is versioned natural language: terms maintained as software artefacts, carrying definition, delimitation, context of validity, timestamp, version and provenance. The paper gives a formal minimal specification, describes the recursive five-step cycle by which such terms arise in practice, restates Korzybski's classical formula in terms of direction of fit for language-controlled cyber-physical systems, delimits the proposal against ten neighbouring traditions along three operationalised criteria, reports the state of implementation since 2025, includes one complete term bundle as an appendix, and states an experimental design by which the thesis can be refuted. Licence note: this record is published under CC BY 4.0. The licence covers the text of this record; the programme's internal working procedures are not part of this publication and are not licensed by it; trademark and name rights remain unaffected. The record opens with the programme's standard legal disclaimer (V6, §1–§40, bilingual). This version (18 September 2026) adds a typeset PDF of the English citation version, with the legal notice on page 1 and the full disclaimer as a legal appendix. The text of the paper is unchanged from version 2.1.