Representing snippets of information abstractly is a task that needs to be performed for various purposes, such as database view specification and the first stage in the natural language generation pipeline for generative AI from structured input, i.e., the content selection stage to determine what needs to be verbalised. For the Abstract Wikipedia project, requirements analysis revealed that such an abstract representation requires multilingual modelling, content selection covering declarative content and functions, and both classes and instances. There is no modelling language that meets either of the three features, let alone a combination. Following a rigorous language design process inclusive of broad stakeholder consultation, we created CoSMo, a novel {\sc Co}ntent {\sc S}election {\sc Mo}deling language that meets these and other requirements so that it may be useful both in Abstract Wikipedia as well as other contexts. We describe the design process, rationale and choices, the specification, and preliminary evaluation of the language.

The names of the constructors and their keys are given in English here, but that is merely convenience. Just as the items in Wikidata, they will be represented by language-independent identifiers. We require one renderer per constructor and language. A renderer is a function that takes abstract content and a language and turns it into natural language text (or an intermediate object for another renderer). Renderers are created and maintained by the community.