Boundary Classifications

What boundary classifications are

Every concept on your page is classified by whether it belongs there. The classification is not about quality; it is about scope. A well-written section on the wrong topic still weakens the page's ability to be found and cited accurately.

ContentGrapher assigns one of four labels to each concept it identifies in your content. Your page's primary topic is always classified as core — this is a fixed rule, not a judgment call. Every other concept is evaluated based on its relationship to the page's structural role.

Core

A core concept is essential to what this page is trying to do. If your page explains how OAuth 2.0 works, then "authorization code flow" is core. It must be covered fully at the depth this page's audience and retrieval role require.

Action: Ensure every core concept is well-integrated. The integration state shown alongside each concept tells you its current status: well_integrated means it is fully covered; weakly_integrated or underexplained means the writing brief will flag it for clarification. See Coverage Score for how integration states are defined.

Supportive

A supportive concept provides useful context but does not need to be fully explained here. It grounds the core without becoming its own topic.

Action: A brief, accurate mention is sufficient. Do not over-explain supportive concepts; doing so pulls focus from the page's core topic and introduces content that belongs elsewhere.

Adjacent

An adjacent concept belongs on a separate, more focused page. It may be closely related, but it has its own depth of explanation that this page cannot and should not provide.

Action: Link to the adjacent concept's dedicated page rather than explaining it here. If that page does not exist, creating it is a content planning task, not a gap in this page. The boundary trigger alongside the classification explains the specific reason ContentGrapher placed it here.

Excluded

An excluded concept is out of scope entirely. Its presence makes the page harder for AI systems to find and cite accurately: a page that mixes unrelated topics is harder to retrieve for any one of them.

Action: Remove or significantly reduce excluded content. If you believe the classification is wrong, read the boundary trigger first. Then check whether the concept introduces a different structural role (explain, guide, compare, evaluate, or convert) than this page's primary role.

Understanding boundary triggers

Each boundary classification comes with one or more boundary triggers: the specific reasons ContentGrapher assigned that classification. These appear alongside each concept in your analysis results.

Common triggers include: the concept requires its own full depth of explanation to be useful here; it belongs to a different structural role than the page's primary role; or it introduces a different stage of the reader's task progression than this page serves.

Boundary triggers are the most actionable signal when you disagree with a classification. Start there — the trigger states exactly what to address.

If the classification seems wrong

First, read the boundary trigger for that concept. It states the specific reason and is the most direct path to understanding whether to accept or dispute the classification.

Second, check what primary retrieval role ContentGrapher detected for this page. A concept classified as adjacent is often correctly placed because it belongs to a different stage of the explanation journey than this page's role allows. See Primary Retrieval Role for how roles are defined.

Third: your page's primary topic (the anchor) is always classified as core. This is a fixed rule that the analysis cannot change.

Fourth: if you believe the page's primary role is miscategorized, check the anchor first. An incorrect anchor produces an incorrect role classification. The anchor is editable in the analysis header.

Why this matters

AI systems retrieve by concept association. A page that tries to explain everything about a topic ends up explaining nothing fully. Boundary classification is how ContentGrapher identifies scope dilution: the single most common structural problem in content that fails to be cited.