From legacy subsets to auditable descriptors: implementing the 2025 T-cell nomenclature guidelines for inflammatory...

T cells are central to inflammatory skin diseases, but legacy subset labels often blur migration, localization, function, differentiation state and antigen context. That problem is amplified in dermatology because skin is a compartmentalized barrier organ. Clinically important questions often concern persistence or relapse, and tissue studies commonly infer key properties such as residency from proxy markers rather than direct assays. The 2025 consensus guidelines for T-cell nomenclature offer a practical foundation: define subset terms operationally in the methods sections of papers, use standardized legacy definitions transparently and apply modular nomenclature when needed to separate measured from inferred properties. Here, we propose a dermatology-specific reporting overlay built on, but not part of, the published modular nomenclature v1.0; this is not a competing skin-specific nomenclature, but a practical reporting aid intended to preserve cross-tissue comparability while making skin-specific sampling context explicit. This overlay foregrounds tissue source, tissue state, location or niche, lineage, assay-defined functional programme and the strength of evidence supporting any residency or trafficking claim. Using psoriasis, atopic dermatitis and allergic contact dermatitis as exemplar diseases, and extending the logic to selected additional inflammatory dermatoses, we show how more conservative and auditable reporting can improve transparency, cross-study comparability and clinical interpretability in skin research without necessarily requiring additional experiments.