Contract Specifications

These living specifications make the architecture testable. Appendices provide architectural context; specifications define contracts, schemas, semantics, conformance expectations, and compatibility rules.

§1

Contract Family Taxonomy

The initial taxonomy contains six additive, independently governable interface-contract families. New families require a decision record.

Agent contracts

agent identity, authority, behavior, tool use, and evidence emission.

Model contracts

model identity, scope, assumptions, validation, uncertainty, and operational limits.

Trust contracts

bounded trust claims, accreditation scope, evidence requirements, and review state.

Evidence graph contracts

provenance, evidence linkage, lineage, and audit relationships.

Ontology and semantic contracts

shared concepts, semantic alignment, and controlled vocabulary.

Security contracts

RESERVED: explicit access-control, authorization, confidentiality, integrity, and boundary obligations; no schemas are published yet.

§2

Seed Specifications

Five seed families are schema-backed at version 0.1.0. Security contracts are reserved and have no schemas yet.

Agent Contracts

VERSION 0.1.0 · SCHEMAS 1 · CONFORMANCE TESTS 13

Agent contracts declare identity, role, owner or steward, authority boundary, supervision model, permitted tools and data sources, inputs and outputs, evidence obligations, dependencies, policy constraints, escalation behavior, and monitoring requirements. Specialized profiles can constrain the role without changing the family schema.

Evidence Graph

VERSION 0.1.0 · SCHEMAS 1 · CONFORMANCE TESTS 8

Evidence graph records link evidence, provenance, assumptions, models, agents, simulations, decisions, review actions, accreditation records, and trust claims. Version 0.1.0 represents recognition reports with existing evidence-artifact, agent, uncertainty-statement, and review-action vocabulary.

Model Contracts

VERSION 0.1.0 · SCHEMAS 1 · CONFORMANCE TESTS 6

Model contracts declare model identity, scope, context of use, units, assumptions, dependencies, numerical methods, parameter origin declarations, provenance completeness, validation evidence, uncertainty characterization, limitations, and revalidation triggers.

Ontology

VERSION 0.1.0 · SCHEMAS 1 · CONFORMANCE TESTS 4

Ontology specifications define shared concepts and relationships for interoperable communication while avoiding a single implementation technology. The seed vocabulary includes capability, agent, model, simulation, evidence artifact, trust claim, accreditation boundary, context of use, assumption, uncertainty statement, decision option, human authority boundary, interface contract, and recognition terms.

Trust Contracts

VERSION 0.1.0 · SCHEMAS 1 · CONFORMANCE TESTS 5

Trust contracts define bounded trust claims for capabilities, models, agents, workflows, evidence packages, and decisions. Claims are linked to evidence, context of use, verification, validation, uncertainty, accreditation scope, authority boundary, monitoring requirements, expiration or re-review triggers, and known limitations.

§3

Schema Conventions

Each family keeps its normative narrative, version file, schemas, examples, validation rules, tests, and fixtures together under one versioned family directory.
Released version directories are immutable. Compatible additions use a minor version; breaking changes use a major version; old schemas remain available.
Every schema uses a stable organization-neutral identifier of the form urn:jbok:specification:<family>:schema:<version>.
Schema versions advance in lockstep with the normative specification version. A record's version selects the applicable schema.
Current SHOULD-level metadata remains optional unless a later normative revision makes it mandatory.
Claim truth, provenance authenticity, digest correctness, human direction, and executed composition remain conformance rules and evidence checks rather than schema-only assertions.

§4

Conformance

The repository-wide specification runner reports 36 conformance tests across the five schema-backed seed families: agent contracts 13, evidence graph 8, model contracts 6, ontology 4, and trust contracts 5.

Conformance tests are executed in CI. The suite validates every schema document, runs each family's versioned tests, accepts valid fixtures, rejects invalid fixtures for documented reasons, and fails on invalid schemas, unexpected fixture results, MUST-rule failures, or record/schema-version mismatches.