You can codify without legibilizing and legibilize without codifying
Chaotic things are both illegible and uncodifed
Anarchic things resist codification but not necessarily legibilization
Vibey things resist legibilization but not necessarily codification (into ritual for eg)
Messy things strongly suggest codification into two or more incompatible schemes, inviting sorting and separate into multiple paradigmatically purer things and triggering arguments about lines of separation
Shitty things are messes are not worth sorting out at all, but whose nature might not be evident until you try
Complicated things can be systematized and codified, but complex things can only be codified. Distinction in the sense of Cynefin loosely.
If you can deal with all these states of things with patience, you might have a career in protocols
Taking the standard definitions of codify and legibility, the former means to arrange laws or rules into a systematic code while the latter deals with the extent to which one can read or decipher something with ease. So, something must be legibilized before it can be codified.
Hmmm….conversely, I wonder if attempts to codify what has not yet been legibilized can be used as a tactic to help with its legibility. This seems to align with the chaos quadrant of the Cynefin framework, which encourages a bias towards action when things are simply too confusing to do otherwise. Along those lines, chaotic things are only illegible and uncodified at certain times. We then make sense of the chaos, and in doing so are able to move towards legibility and codification. That is, until things become chaotic once again…