Certain principles are fundamental to operational semantics, regardless of the languages or idioms involved. Such principles include rule-based definitions and proof techniques for congruence results. We formulate these principles in the general context of categorical logic. From this general formulation we recover precise results for particular language idioms by interpreting the logic in particular categories. For instance, results for first-order calculi, such as CCS, arise from considering the general results in the category of sets. Results for languages involving substitution and name generation, such as the pi-calculus, arise from considering the general results in categories of sheaves and group actions. As an extended example, we develop a tyft/tyxt-like rule format for open bisimulation in the pi-calculus.