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Agent OS
AOS-GOV-001 Normative foundation

Specification Lifecycle and Change Control

Specification Lifecycle and Change Control: scope, decisions, requirements, evidence, risks, and traceability for the Agent OS programme.

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Specification Lifecycle and Change Control

This document defines how decisions, contributions, funding, security reports, partnerships, and public claims are governed.

Table of Contents

Purpose and Scope

Area: Governance.

This document defines how decisions, contributions, funding, security reports, partnerships, and public claims are governed.

This document owns the semantics implied by Specification Lifecycle and Change Control. It does not assert that every described subsystem already exists. It defines the target model, constraints, evidence needed to trust an implementation, and the boundary with adjacent documents.

Normative Position

  1. Define the boundary, owner, inputs, outputs, failure modes, observability, security authority, lifecycle, and compatibility policy.
  2. Keep implementation facts separate from desired outcomes and unverified assumptions.
  3. Require a reproducible evidence bundle before downstream components depend on the result.

Operating Model

The operating model is contract-first and evidence-driven. A component declares its authority, resources, lifecycle, error model, cancellation and timeout behavior, observability, version, and compatibility promise. Backends are replaceable only when the same conformance suite passes and no forbidden platform type leaks into portable layers.

Implementation proceeds through a reference model or mock, deterministic QEMU evidence where relevant, documentation-first physical hardware, and quality-hardware evidence. Pixel 9 adapters remain quarantined according to ADR-0004.

Requirements

  • R01. Define the boundary, owner, inputs, outputs, failure modes, observability, security authority, lifecycle, and compatibility policy.
  • R02. Keep implementation facts separate from desired outcomes and unverified assumptions.
  • R03. Require a reproducible evidence bundle before downstream components depend on the result.
  • R04. Specify normal, partial, denied, timeout, cancellation, restart, upgrade, and permanent-failure behavior.
  • R05. Expose structured diagnostics without leaking secrets or vendor-specific implementation details.
  • R06. Link material unknowns to a claim and, when testable, an experiment with an owner and gate.
  • R07. Update affected documentation and task data when evidence changes the model.

Failure and Degradation

Degradation must be explicit rather than accidental. The system reports capability absence, reduced quality, unavailable provider, stale data, or unsafe condition through typed states. It must not silently fall back to broader authority, unrestricted legacy execution, unverified firmware, lossy data migration, or irreversible agent action.

Recovery defines what state is retained, reconstructed, re-enrolled, compensated, or intentionally discarded. Unsupported hardware or providers are rejected at binding time where possible.

Evidence and Acceptance

  • Reviewed specification.
  • Linked tasks, claims, sources and experiments.
  • Conformance or acceptance evidence.
  • Evidence records target identity, hardware revision, firmware, source commit, toolchain, configuration, seed, timestamps, artifacts, expected result, actual result, and reviewer.
  • Acceptance requires the referenced tasks to meet their own criteria; prose completion is not implementation completion.

Implementation Obligations

Task Obligation Priority Gate/Milestone Verification
AOS-DOCS-003 Normalize source archive into normative specifications P0 M0 architecture and product reviewers sample every source family
AOS-DOCS-012 Tag documentation baseline release P0 M0 clean rebuild and validation from packaged source
AOS-DOCS-013 Operate monthly documentation and tracker reconciliation P2 Continuous compare IDs, states, dates, dependencies and links across systems
AOS-CORE-040 Freeze kernel API level 0 at capability vertical-slice gate P0 M2 architecture/security/platform review of evidence and independent rebuild
AOS-PLAT-004 Define API-level and schema evolution tooling P1 M2 seed breaking/compatible changes and multi-level client/server matrices
AOS-COMM-001 Ratify governance and specification lifecycle P0 M0 founder/core-team/legal review and two simulated architecture/community disputes

Risks and Open Questions

  • Undefined ownership and failure semantics create hidden coupling.
  • Unverified source claims can become architecture accidentally.
  • Open-question rule: an unanswered high-impact question becomes a claim/experiment record and cannot be hidden in meeting notes.
  • Stop rule: work stops or changes track when legal rights, recovery, debug access, safety, or the required evidence path is unavailable.

Related Documents

Planning Reference Anchors

Api Levels

AOS-CORE-040 — Freeze kernel API level 0 at capability vertical-slice gate; AOS-PLAT-004 — Define API-level and schema evolution tooling

Change Types

AOS-DOCS-003 — Normalize source archive into normative specifications

Document States

AOS-COMM-001 — Ratify governance and specification lifecycle

Release Baseline

AOS-DOCS-012 — Tag documentation baseline release; AOS-DOCS-013 — Operate monthly documentation and tracker reconciliation