KGCL (peer-reviewed, Database 2025) implements node and edge changes but explicitly defers merge and split — the topology-reorganizing operations

The Knowledge Graph Change Language paper — peer-review status confirmed (full editorial trail on the article of record; PubMed/PMC indexed) — defines its implemented taxonomy in Table 1 as two families: NodeChange (rename, obsoletion, deletion, class creation, synonym/definition edits) and EdgeChange (edge creation/deletion, NodeMove, PredicateChange).

What it does not implement is exactly the pair that reorganizes topology: "heuristic changes, such as concept merge and split, are yet to be considered" (Discussion — future work). "Merge" appears in the introduction's informal framing of the problem space; "split" isn't even mentioned there. So a "add/modify/merge/split" reading of KGCL (the form the harvested lead carried) overstates its symmetry: add and modify map cleanly; merge is acknowledged but unbuilt; split is absent. NodeMove is the closest implemented operation to a restructuring move, and it relocates one node at a time.

Why this is on the vault's shelf. The vault's own governance question — targeted hooks-and-lint versus a global consolidation pass (question-consolidation-pass-vs-revisit-protocol) — is at bottom a question about when a knowledge graph needs merge/split-class reorganization rather than in-place edits. The most current peer-reviewed change vocabulary for knowledge graphs stops short of formalizing exactly those operations; a vault consolidation pass would be operating past the edge of what the field has standardized. The cognitive-science taxonomy this maps onto is now on the shelf: claim-schema-change-four-mode-taxonomy (KGCL's node/edge edits ≈ accretion/tuning; the deferred merge/split ≈ restructuring/schema-formation). See moc-schema-change-and-restructuring for that cluster and moc-knowledge-gap-detection for the sibling question of finding what to reorganize.