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Change Contract

The change contract defines how Accountable Record source artifacts may evolve without breaking downstream profiles, packages, verifiers, or generated exports.

Authoritative source data lives in:

data/contracts/change-contract.toml

Purpose

AR is designed for long-lived records and independently published packages. That means changes must be classified explicitly.

A change may be:

  • additive;
  • compatible;
  • breaking;
  • deprecated;
  • superseded;
  • withdrawn.

The change contract defines how these categories affect package versions, element identity, lock files, generated exports, and downstream compatibility.

Boundary

This page explains the model.

The TOML source defines the contract.