Contracts¶

AR uses explicit contracts for the parts of the system that must remain stable across repositories, profiles, packages, verifiers, and generated exports.

Authoritative contract source data lives in:

data/contracts/

Core contracts¶

Contract	Purpose
Identity Contract	Defines stable, authority-based, version-free identifiers.
Package Contract	Defines package composition, dependency resolution, locks, and digests.
Change Contract	Defines additive, compatible, breaking, deprecated, superseded, and withdrawn changes.

Why contracts are separate¶

These contracts are load-bearing.

They determine whether downstream systems can safely cite, package, resolve, verify, and evolve AR artifacts over time.

Boundary¶

This page orients readers.

The TOML files under data/contracts/ are authoritative.