openprose__prose/spec/01-Language.md

OpenProse

Standing AI jobs, declared as durable Markdown contracts.

This document is the specification of the OpenProse Language & Framework — the durable *.prose.md contract format, the skill semantics that interpret it, the model-run compiler that lowers it, and the standard library that packages reusable behavior. It is the spec for what ships bundled as the SKILL.

The OpenProse corpus divides labor exactly, and each document maps to what ships:

• 01-Language.md — this document, the Language & Framework, bundled as the SKILL: syntax, kinds, sections, compile model, std/co.
• 02-Harness.md — the Harness contract: what any conforming harness (a CLI, a server, a hosted runtime) must do to serve these contracts — the loop, invariants, the reconciler, memoization, forecast, receipts, composition.
• 03-AuthoringPattern.md — the Authoring Pattern, SKILL-bundled but harness-governed: how to write *.prose.md so a conforming harness's mechanisms engage. It bridges this doc and the Harness doc.
• 00-Tenets.md — the constitution. When any document tensions with a tenet, the tenet wins.

This file has three parts, mirroring its companions:

1. The ideal OpenProse language and framework.
2. What exists today (the current platform/external/prose skill package, treated as ground truth).
3. What is next to bring the current skill to the ideal.

---

Part I — The Ideal OpenProse Language & Framework

OpenProse is a contract format, runtime doctrine, skill package, and standard library for making agent work readable, reviewable, versioned, reusable, and inspectable. A user writes one *.prose.md file of durable intent. The compile phase (Forme) wires the responsibility DAG from the contract set; a Prose Complete agent host then serves that DAG — spawning isolated bounded sessions and leaving a durable receipt under an OpenProse root.

The central idea:

Markdown source defines intent.
Skill and interpreter docs define semantics.
A model-run compiler lowers semantics into IR; deterministic code validates it.
The harness serves IR.
Runs interpret and act inside bounded activations.

The commitments that define the language

Each is a Tenet made concrete at the language layer. They are the north star; Part II is honest about how far the current skill has climbed toward them.

• Markdown is the only contract (Tenet 1). *.prose.md carries 100% of semantic weight. Compiled IR and other projections are derived views; if any disagrees with the Markdown, the Markdown is right. There is no second surface where intent lives — not a prompt, not a tool config, not a hidden judge prompt (Tenet 1).
• The responsibility is the program (the inversion). A standing goal written as durable intent is the top-level authored object — a kind: responsibility, mounted as a node whose truth is maintained over time. Node-ness comes from mounting, never from statefulness: a bounded, no-continuity job is a kind: function (a called, ephemeral helper that binds ### Parameters and returns ### Returns), not a lesser kind of loop.
• The same Markdown runs on any Prose Complete host (Tenet 1). Every contract authored against this spec executes identically on any compliant host. A fresh git clone is a first-class experience; a long-lived host adds reliability and scale, never semantics.
• Intelligence lives in the model, not in deterministic code (Tenet 2). Compilation is itself model work — intelligent sessions lower a contract into its IR (the Forme topology, the per-node canonicalizer, and the postcondition validators — deterministic where the obligation is expressible, render-attested where it is semantic); deterministic code only validates that IR, wires connectors, enforces boundaries, schedules, and signs. The language never grows a config format to encode what the model should decide.
• The authored surface is small, stable, and complete. Five kinds (responsibility, function, gateway, pattern, test), the canonical ### section set (### Description, ### Goal, ### Requires, ### Maintains, ### Continuity, ### Invariants, ### Errors, ### Strategies, ### Execution, plus ### Parameters/### Returns for a function, the gateway ingress sections (### Schedule/### Receives/### Emits/### Payload), the test and pattern sections (### Fixtures/### Expects for a test, ### Slots/### Config/### Delegation for a pattern), and the carried ### Shape/### Environment/### Skills/### Tools/### Runtime), and the header hierarchy are the entire language. Persistence is conferred by mounting a responsibility — the harness gives a mounted node its single durable world-model — not by a config flag. New capability is new semantics in skill docs, never new syntax or a YAML overlay.
• Material change is declared, then frozen into a fingerprint (cost scales with surprise). The author declares, inside ### Maintains, what counts as a material change — which fields matter, how text/sets/numbers normalize, and (optionally) how the truth divides into facets. Compilation lowers that prose into a deterministic canonicalizer, and the run phase fingerprints each render's output through it. An unmoved fingerprint means the world did not materially change, so the dumb reconciler skips the render at zero cost — there is no judge re-deciding "did this change." The fingerprint is one term of the node's three-part memo key (contract_fingerprint, input_fingerprints, freshness_epoch); a declared freshness window (valid_until) is the third term, so silent staleness still forces a re-render even when nothing observable moved (see ### Requires). Absent a material/immaterial split, maintenance cost scales with the clock, not with surprise. The normalization convention is the author's prose inside ### Maintains; the compiled mechanics are the harness's (02-Harness.md).
• The language packages reusable behavior and stays a public good. std and co prove OpenProse programs compose like code. The language, runtime doctrine, and skill are MIT and free, forever; commerce is out of scope of this specification and nothing here depends on it.
• Agents are first-class authors. Humans and agents co-equally author, fork, and compose contracts. Every surface, error, and metadata field is designed for both readers from the start.
• Every contract is portable (Tenet 6). The Markdown, with its durable trail, can leave for any Prose Complete harness with no lost semantics. The public artifact is the contract; the deployment's secrets and data stay private.

What the responsibility's load-bearing sections mean

Most ### sections' meaning is self-evident from their name. Four carry the semantic load of a kind: responsibility and the Ideal must state them rather than defer: ### Requires, ### Maintains, ### Continuity, and ### Invariants.

### Maintains is the world-model schema — the truth this node keeps current. It does four jobs at once: it types the maintained truth; it carries the canonicalization spec (which fields are material, how they normalize) that compiles into the node's fingerprint; it declares facets (below); and it states postconditions — the obligations a render must satisfy before it may commit. There is no separate judge and no ### Criteria: satisfaction folds into ### Maintains, checked deterministically where it can be expressed as a validator and self-attested by the render where it is semantic. A render that cannot satisfy its postconditions commits nothing — the prior truth stands and a failed receipt records why: a reason addressed to the contract author, naming exactly what the render could not satisfy. (A harness whose receipt does not yet carry that reason field honors the naming only in-render — see 02-Harness.md Open specification items.)

Facets make subscription structural. A #### sub-heading inside ### Maintains declares a facet — a named part of the truth. Its name is, at once, its fingerprint unit (the canonicalizer emits one token per facet, plus an always-on atomic token over the whole truth), its subscription symbol (a consumer names it in ### Requires, and the reconciler wakes that consumer only when that facet's token moves — Requires.<facet> ↔ Maintains.<facet>), and its region of the world-model. Declaring no parts is the atomic default — one truth, one token — and costs nothing. Symmetrically, a consumer whose ### Requires names the producer without a facet binds to that always-on atomic token and so wakes on any material change (the OR of every facet); naming a facet is how a consumer narrows that to one region. This adds no new grammar; it reuses the heading hierarchy and the Requires↔Maintains join. Structure is subscription.

### Requires declares what the node subscribes to. It names the upstream facets this node consumes; Forme matches each ### Requires entry to a producer's ### Maintains facet and draws the subscription edge. ### Requires is the input side of the memo key: the run phase fingerprints the node's contract together with its subscribed inputs and its freshness epoch, and re-renders only when one of them moves. (A harness may realize the freshness term as a forecast-driven self-receipt over a two-part (contract_fingerprint, input_fingerprints) key rather than a literal third element; the decision semantics are identical — see 02-Harness.md Quiescence.)

### Continuity declares the wake source — when, beyond an input change, a node should re-render. It is not a schedule. A node is input-driven by default (it wakes when a subscribed facet moves); ### Continuity adds a self-driven cadence (the truth goes stale on its own — a valid_until freshness state the node carries in its world-model, read on a forecast cadence) or marks a kind: gateway as external-driven (an ingress event wakes it). Freshness state lives in the world-model as data; ### Continuity carries only the policy that reads it. When a valid_until lapses, the harness mechanically moves the affected facet's fingerprint and wakes the node — no model call to decide that time has passed.

### Invariants declares the render's actuation boundary — the bound on how it may touch the world. A render may act (send the mail, write the register), but ### Invariants states the rate and scope of that world-mutation and the mutations it must not make ("only the published truth is writable; never modify the observed system"). It is the authoring-time half of the render/commit split: only the canonicalized published truth re-enters the memo, and ### Invariants bounds everything else the render may do. (This is the capability rate/scope bound; which collaborators a render may call is ### Shape's job.) In the ideal the harness lowers and enforces this boundary at the render/commit split; today it is authored prose the render is asked to honor until a harness lowers it — see 02-Harness.md Metaphor, seam 2.

The author writes these; the harness owns the fingerprinting, the forecast cadence, the receipts, and the subscription wiring. The granular how-to — declaring material fields, faceting the truth, giving the world a cheap content identity, projection-only shapes — is the authoring pattern's (03-AuthoringPattern.md); the runtime mechanics are the harness's (02-Harness.md).

The full mechanics of the runtime that serves these contracts — the two-phase compile/run split, the memo engine, the deterministic continuity clock, the receipt ledger, composition — are not specified here. This document states their language-level semantics — what the author declares (a freshness window, a postcondition, the receipt as the commit object) and what it means — and leaves the mechanics that realize them to the harness (02-Harness.md). This document's ideal is the language: the contract a human or agent writes, and the semantics by which it is understood.

---

Part II — What Exists Today

This part is a synthesis of the current openprose/prose repository, treated as the source of truth, measured honestly against Part I. The v0.15.0 "Intelligent React" overhaul advanced the skill's runtime_contract from 1 to 2, retiring the judge / verdict / pressure / fulfillment loop and re-cleaving the kind taxonomy around a single render atom. That migration is now essentially complete across the corpus: the teaching docs (SKILL.md, contract-markdown.md, concepts/, changelog.md), the library examples under skills/open-prose/examples/, and the bundled packages/std/ and packages/co/ contracts all carry the current vocabulary — zero kind: service, kind: system, or ### Ensures remain. The legacy @openprose/prose-cli binary has been removed: the language is embodied by the SKILL in-session, and a conforming harness (02-Harness.md) compiles and serves standing responsibilities. Older framing around hosted cloud products, social execution networks, company financing, kind: program, standalone .prose source files, and the old registry model is not part of this synthesis unless the current repo still contains a live implementation.

Current Shape

The skill (SKILL version: 0.16.0, runtime_contract: 2) has five load-bearing spec files plus the reconciler-semantics concept docs the v0.15.0 overhaul added:

Piece	Location	Role
Contract Markdown	skills/open-prose/contract-markdown.md	Canonical *.prose.md source format for responsibilities, functions, gateways, patterns, tests
Forme	skills/open-prose/forme.md	Compile-phase wiring render: matches ### Requires ↔ ### Maintains and draws the responsibility-DAG subscription edges
Prose VM	skills/open-prose/prose.md	Bounded-render execution semantics: one session reads evidence, queries prior world-model by reference, writes the world-model, signs a receipt
ProseScript	skills/open-prose/prosescript.md	Imperative choreography inside ### Execution and pattern ### Delegation
Responsibility Runtime	skills/open-prose/responsibility-runtime.md	The compile (intelligent) / run (dumb) split, repository IR, compile, serve, and status
Concepts	skills/open-prose/concepts/{responsibility,reconciler}.md	The kind: responsibility semantic contract and the dumb fingerprint-comparison reconciler (no judge)

The shippable repository also contains:

Area	Location	Role
OpenProse skill	skills/open-prose/	Agent-facing runtime/spec bundle — the language's execution surface (the agent embodies the VM in-session)
Standard library	packages/std/	Reusable roles, patterns, ops, delivery, memory, and evals (migrated to the current vocabulary)
Company-as-Prose package	packages/co/	Generic company-operations starter contracts (migrated to the current vocabulary)
Examples	skills/open-prose/examples/	Native OpenProse repositories; migrated to responsibility/function/gateway
Tests and fixtures	repo-root skill tests (tests/open-prose/)	Skill/spec conformance and compile-validation
Plugin envelopes	.codex-plugin/, .claude-plugin/, .agents/plugins/	Marketplace/install metadata

OpenProse is distributed as an MIT-licensed beta. The SKILL and the language collect no telemetry; whether a harness does is that harness's own documented concern, outside this repository. There is no longer a prose binary: the language is embodied by the SKILL in-session, and served responsibilities are the job of a conforming harness (02-Harness.md).

What OpenProse Is Not

The current repository narrows the ground truth:

• Current source files are *.prose.md, not plain .md contracts or standalone .prose programs.
• Current authored kinds taught by the skill are responsibility, function, gateway, pattern, and test. kind: service was renamed to kind: function (a called, ephemeral helper with ### Parameters → ### Returns); kind: system was deleted (composition is intra-node ProseScript call or a cross-node ### Requires ↔ ### Maintains subscription, never a third autowired graph kind).
• The judge model is retired. There is no judge, no verdict, no up/drifting/down/blocked status enum, no pressure record, no separate fulfillment activation, and no policy-compile loop. Commit-gating is deterministic postcondition validators (lowered from ### Maintains) plus the render's self-attestation; receipt status is rendered | skipped | failed.
• The retired sections are gone from the taught surface: ### Ensures became ### Maintains (re-purposed as the world-model schema, not a renamed output list); ### Criteria folded into ### Maintains postconditions; ### Memory folded into the single persisted world-model; ### Fulfillment folded into the render or a delegated function; ### Services / ### Wiring were deleted with system.
• kind: program, kind: composite, compose:, old .deps/ layout, ~/.prose, and .prose/runs/ are legacy upgrade context.
• prose migrate, prose wire, and old compile-as-lint wording are retired; current migration is prose upgrade, and current Responsibility Runtime compilation is prose compile.
• Bare owner/repo identifiers and p.prose.md registry resolution are reserved/inert. Current dependency resolution is explicit git-host based, with std/ and co/ shorthands.
• The current repo does not specify a product/business platform surface like Cloud billing, sprites, Constellation, or an investor narrative. An earlier ideation note explored the hosted product, public/social surface, and go-to-market motion (stale product ideation, not a live spec); another sketched forward-looking subscription, royalty, and dependency-graph economics (hypothetical, not a live spec and not load-bearing); the brand and design surface is a product concern kept outside this repository. None of that is live OpenProse language/runtime material; this file remains the language and runtime spec only.

Prose Complete

OpenProse runs inside an agent host. A host is "Prose Complete" when it can map the abstract VM primitives onto real capabilities:

Primitive	Required behavior
spawn_session	Run a render (a responsibility or a called function) in an isolated agent/session with a prompt, optional model, and access to declared input/output paths
ask_user	Pause for missing required caller input and resume with the answer
read_state / write_state	Read and write run state through the selected backend (<openprose-root>/runs/{id}/ artifacts and durable records)
copy_binding	Publish a declared output through the active backend (filesystem writes the canonical artifact to world-model/ and signs a receipt; never publishes undeclared scratch)
check_env	Confirm an environment variable exists without exposing its value

Codex-style and Claude Code-style coding agents are the primary documented hosts. There is no prose binary that forwards to a separate harness: the SKILL-loaded coding-agent session is the host and embodies the VM directly. OpenProse commands are therefore first an agent-session command language. An in-session instruction such as:

prose run src/hello.prose.md

means "embody the OpenProse VM and execute this contract here, in-session" — the agent maps the primitives onto its own host tools (spawning sub-sessions, reading and writing run state, checking env). It never parses .prose semantics mechanically; the SKILL-loaded session embodies the VM. Continuous, served responsibilities are reconciled in-session by prose serve (a bounded reconcile pass); a conforming harness may deliver the same lifecycle durably, outside the session (02-Harness.md).

OpenProse Root

Every run happens relative to an OpenProse root:

Scope	Root
Native repository	Repository root
Attached repository	repo/.agents/prose
User-global	~/.agents/prose

The root layout is:

Path	Purpose
src/	Authored intent: responsibilities, functions, gateways, patterns, tests
dist/	Compiled intent (repository IR manifest.next.json / manifest.active.json)
runs/	Activation receipts for bounded VM runs
state/	Durable cross-run state
state/agents/	Durable agent memory
state/world-model/{node}/	Each responsibility's persisted canonical world-model, with its signed, append-only receipt ledger in a harness-chosen receipt ledger layout (the reference harness ships a flat receipts.json) — this is the language VM root layout, and a harness may lay out its own state-dir differently (02-Harness.md); no separate status/pressure store — the judge loop is retired
deps/	Installed git-native dependencies
prose.lock	Dependency lockfile
.env	Local runtime environment

This root model matters because OpenProse is not just syntax. Its runtime contract includes where runs are recorded, how dependencies are found, and where standing goals keep their history.

Contract Markdown

Contract Markdown is the human-facing language surface. A *.prose.md file has small YAML frontmatter for identity and Markdown ### sections for contracts, runtime hints, shape, execution, and world-model semantics.

A responsibility — the headline kind — declares both halves of its reactive interface (### Requires it subscribes to, ### Maintains it keeps current):

---
name: research-report
kind: responsibility
id: 067NC4KG01RG50R40M30E20918
---

### Goal

A current, sourced answer to the tracked question is maintained.

### Requires

- A current view of the source material for the question.

### Maintains

A concise answer with citations.

Material: the answer text and its sources. Immaterial (excluded from the
fingerprint): `fetched_at`, request ids, cosmetic ordering.

Postconditions:
- Every claim is backed by a cited source.

### Continuity

input-driven; self-driven daily.

A kind: responsibility or kind: gateway file may carry an id: frontmatter field: a tooling-minted, UUIDv7-compatible identifier (rendered as 26 characters of uppercase Crockford base32) that gives the contract an identity surviving name: and filename renames. Without one, the slug is the identity. World-model and receipt-ledger state is keyed by the mounted node, which defaults to the slug. Authors do not hand-write id:; tooling mints it.

The five current authored kinds are:

Kind	Run model	Purpose
responsibility	Served (continuously reconciled)	The headline kind: a mounted DAG node maintaining a standing truth over time
function	Called (one-shot)	A stateless, ephemeral helper: bind ### Parameters, run one render, return ### Returns. No Forme phase, no world-model. (Renamed from service.)
gateway	Mounted as external-driven	Sugar for an external-driven responsibility; compiled into a trigger registration the harness serves
test	Via prose test	Fixtures plus natural-language assertions against a subject responsibility or function
pattern	Instantiated at compile time	Reusable coordination algorithm expanded into nodes; never directly run

Canonical sections include:

Section	Applies to	Meaning
### Description	all	Human summary; preserved for readers, not a contract
### Goal	responsibility, gateway	The render's one-sentence standing intent
### Requires	responsibility, pattern slots	Subscription contracts naming facet-level needs; Forme's match target (Requires.<facet> ↔ Maintains.<facet>)
### Maintains	responsibility, gateway	The world-model schema doing four jobs at once: type, canonicalization spec (material vs immaterial fields), facets (a #### sub-heading), and postconditions
### Parameters / ### Returns	function	The plain call interface (inputs, return value)
### Continuity	responsibility, gateway	The structural wake-source declaration: input-driven (default), self-driven (cadence), external-driven (gateway)
### Errors	responsibility, function	Declared failures the node may signal
### Invariants	responsibility, function, pattern	Properties that hold regardless of outcome
### Strategies	responsibility, function, test	Judgment rules and edge-case guidance
### Environment	responsibility, function	Required runtime variables, checked by name only
### Skills	responsibility, function	Agent harness skills the component requires, as namespace:name; resolved fail-closed against ./skills/, ~/.claude/skills/, ~/.codex/skills/, ~/.agents/skills/
### Tools	responsibility, function	Host tools (cli:<name>, mcp:<name>) declared by name only
### Runtime	responsibility, function	Execution hints such as model
### Shape	responsibility, function	Capability boundaries: self, delegates, prohibited work
### Execution	responsibility, function	ProseScript render body that pins choreography
### Fixtures / ### Expects / ### Expects Not	test	Test data and assertions
### Slots / ### Config / ### Delegation	pattern	Pattern interface and algorithm
### Schedule / ### Receives / ### Emits / ### Payload	gateway	Time/event ingress declarations

The retired judge-era sections (### Ensures, ### Criteria, ### Fulfillment, ### Constraints, ### Memory, ### Services, ### Wiring) are documented in contract-markdown.md and changelog.md only as fold/upgrade targets, not as authoring surface.

Header hierarchy is part of the language, and the #### level is now load-bearing:

Header	Meaning
#	Optional human title
##	Inline responsibility/function boundary inside multi-node files
###	Section inside the current responsibility, function, gateway, pattern, or test
#### inside ### Maintains	Semantic: a facet — a named, independently-subscribable part of the maintained truth; its name is the fingerprint unit, the subscription symbol, and the world-model subtree
#### inside ### Requires	Semantic: a facet-need — a named subscription Forme matches Requires.<facet> ↔ Maintains.<facet>

Composition has exactly two forms (there is no system graph kind): intra-node choreography is a ProseScript call inside one render's ### Execution; cross-node composition is a Forme-wired ### Requires ↔ ### Maintains subscription between responsibilities. Pattern instances remain current YAML syntax, declared in a responsibility's slots:

- name: reviewed-output
  pattern: std/patterns/worker-critic
  with:
    worker: writer
    critic: reviewer
  config:
    max_rounds: 3

Forme

Forme is OpenProse's semantic wiring layer. Traditional containers wire by type. Forme wires by reading contracts. Since v0.15.0 it is a compile-phase render that produces the resolved responsibility DAG (the topology world-model), not a per-system manifest compiler.

Forme:

1. Reads the full set of mounted responsibility contracts.
2. Resolves local nodes, dependency paths, and pattern files; expands pattern instances into concrete nodes.
3. Matches each ### Requires facet-need to a producer's ### Maintains facet (Requires.<facet> ↔ Maintains.<facet>), using exact names, semantic equivalence, and shape hints.
4. Surfaces unsatisfied or ambiguous matches as diagnostics — never a silent guess.
5. Draws the subscription edges and registers external-driven entry points (gateways).
6. Produces the topology world-model — the resolved DAG with its edges — that the dumb reconciler reads to schedule and propagate.

The repository keeps the Forme doctrine in skills/open-prose/forme.md. The packages/std/ops/wire.prose.md contract is a migrated kind: function (invoked in-session as prose run std/ops/wire). Forme running standalone (no harness) is still well-defined: a single responsibility applies its compiled canonicalizer locally to fingerprint its own receipt.

Prose VM

The Prose VM is the execution semantics. When an agent runs OpenProse, it is not merely describing a VM. It performs the VM by mapping the spec to host tools, spawning real sessions, writing real artifacts, and evaluating real contracts. The render atom both phases agree on is (contract, evidence, prior world-model) → (new world-model, receipt).

For a called function:

1. Snapshot the invoked source.
2. Bind ### Parameters.
3. Spawn one session with the function contract, inputs, and workspace.
4. Wait for the declared ### Returns value.
5. Return it and record the run. (A function is stateless: no world-model, no Forme phase.)

For a responsibility render:

1. The reconciler computes the memo key (contract_fingerprint, input_fingerprints); if neither half moved and no valid_until has lapsed since the last receipt, it writes a skipped receipt and spawns nothing.
2. Otherwise spawn one bounded session — the render — which reads the evidence the wake delivered and queries the prior world-model by reference (never pre-stuffed into context).
3. The render writes the updated world-model and signs a receipt carrying the new fingerprints.
4. On a rendered receipt whose fingerprint moved, wake the downstreams subscribed to the moved facet(s).

The default filesystem backend creates, under each run, a control-plane envelope (the compiled Forme topology or a minimal activation record for a lone function, root.prose.md, and sources/) before reporting success:

runs/{run-id}/
  root.prose.md
  sources/
  workspace/
  world-model/
  receipts/
  vm.log.md
  agents/

The separation matters:

Directory	Meaning
sources/	Immutable source snapshots for the run
workspace/	Private, never-fingerprinted render scratch
world-model/	The published, canonically-serialized + fingerprinted truth visible downstream
receipts/	The signed, append-only receipt ledger for the run

OpenProse also specifies in-context, SQLite, and PostgreSQL state backends. Filesystem is the default and normative reference. In-context is for small ephemeral runs. SQLite and PostgreSQL are experimental durable alternatives that keep the run envelope but move events and data-plane bindings into database records.

ProseScript

Contract Markdown is declarative. ProseScript is the pinning layer.

Use ProseScript when order, loops, branching, retries, parallelism, or exact call choreography matters:

### Execution

```prose
let findings = call researcher
  topic: topic

let report = call writer
  findings: findings

return report
```

ProseScript supports call, parallel, for, loop, if, choice, try/catch/finally, throw, agent, session, resume, blocks, and pipeline-style operations. In current Contract Markdown, the reactive interface belongs to ### Requires and ### Maintains (responsibility) or ### Parameters and ### Returns (function); embedded ProseScript should not redeclare them.

Responsibility Runtime

Responsibility Runtime is the continuity layer for repositories that need standing goals to remain true over time. Its spine is the compile (intelligent) / run (dumb) split: intelligence decides what counts as a change once, at compile time; determinism checks whether one happened every time, at run time.

The stack is:

Layer	Role
Responsibility	The standing truth kept current (a mounted node)
Reconciler	The dumb run phase: compare fingerprints, skip / render / propagate
Forme	Compile-phase wiring of ### Requires ↔ ### Maintains
Prose VM	One bounded render that computes the next world-model and signs a receipt

A kind: responsibility file is semantic and normative. It defines ### Goal (the standing intent), ### Requires (subscriptions), ### Maintains (the world-model schema: type, canonicalization, facets, postconditions), and ### Continuity (the wake-source declaration: input-driven, self-driven, or external-driven).

A kind: gateway is sugar for an external-driven responsibility: it declares ### Continuity: external-driven, has no ### Requires, maintains the latest incoming truth, and describes ingress (schedules, local HTTP routes, webhooks, provider events) that inference cannot safely recover.

The reconcile loop is dumb on purpose (the full semantics are in concepts/reconciler.md):

1. A receipt arrives. Its wake.source is input (an upstream facet moved), self (the continuity clock's synthetic self-receipt), or external (a gateway turning a trigger into an edge receipt).
2. Compute the memo key (contract_fingerprint, input_fingerprints). If neither half moved and no valid_until has lapsed, write a skipped receipt and spawn nothing.
3. Otherwise spawn one render. It computes the new truth, leaves its ### Maintains postconditions satisfied, writes the world-model, and signs a receipt with status rendered or failed.
4. Only a rendered receipt whose fingerprint moved wakes downstreams subscribed to the moved facet(s).

There is no judge in the wake or commit decision, no status enum, no pressure record, and no separate fulfillment activation. A render that errors or leaves a postcondition unsatisfied commits nothing (the last-good truth stands) and writes a cheap failed receipt. Freshness state (valid_until) lives in the world-model; a lapse mechanically moves a facet fingerprint via the self-driven tick — a zero-token continuity move, not a model re-render.

Current live serve support includes local cron and HTTP adapters. Queues, file watches, provider subscription setup, webhook authentication, and automatic manifest reload are explicitly later phases.

Compile-Phase IR (v2)

prose compile lowers source under an OpenProse root into generated compiled intent. Markdown remains the durable authoring surface; IR is disposable compiled intent consumed by deterministic infrastructure. The v0.15.0 overhaul re-shaped the IR around the compile/run split: it is now the compile-phase output — the topology, the per-node canonicalizers, the per-node postcondition validators, and the frozen contract fingerprints — not a judge-era activations/criteria manifest.

The v2 top-level shape (compiler/ir-v0.md) is:

{
  "kind": "openprose.compile-phase-ir",
  "version": 2,
  "sources": [],
  "topology": {},
  "canonicalizers": [],
  "postconditions": [],
  "contract_fingerprints": {},
  "diagnostics": []
}

The canonical output files are:

File	Meaning
dist/manifest.next.json	Fresh compile output
dist/manifest.active.json	The promoted manifest the served runtime consumes

Promotion from next to active is explicit.

IR records include:

Record	Meaning
sources[]	Discovered contract set (allowed kinds: responsibility, function, gateway, pattern, test, unknown); only responsibilities and gateways become topology nodes — functions appear when discovered but never as nodes
topology	Forme's resolved DAG: nodes (each with contract_fingerprint and wake_source), edges, and the acyclic postcondition
canonicalizers[]	One per node: the deterministic lowering of ### Maintains — canonicalizer(world-model) → fingerprints
postconditions[]	One set per node: validators lowered from ### Maintains postconditions (deterministic where expressible, render-attested otherwise)
contract_fingerprints	The frozen { node → fingerprint } map — the memo key's first half
diagnostics[]	Info/warning/error messages (unsatisfied/ambiguous Forme matches, missing structured backings) with optional source paths

The canonical compiler is a pinned ProseScript program at skills/open-prose/compiler/index.prose.md whose agents are compile-step renders — Forme (wiring), the canonicalizer compiler, and the postcondition compiler — so the compile output is itself auditable (Tenet 2). A conforming harness realizes the same compile phase through its own compile adapter (content-addressed IR cache; 02-Harness.md). There is no separate deterministic source-compiler binary — the deprecated prose CLI that once shipped one has been removed.

Important compiler doctrine:

• Discover every .prose.md under the source root.
• Match ### Requires ↔ ### Maintains only when the resolution is clear; warn instead of guessing wiring, timing, or facet matches.
• Lint any subscribed field that lacks a structured, canonicalizable backing.
• Do not invent provider auth, queue names, routes, payload schemas, or subscription setup the source does not supply.
• Write manifest.next.json only after the IR shape is valid.
• Stop after writing; the harness performs deterministic validation.

The compile-phase IR is source-derived: it is a function of the *.prose.md source set and nothing else. The harness's token-truth receipts, forecasts, freshness state, and reconciler decisions are sibling runtime state owned by the harness — not IR fields and not new source syntax. See Boundary with the harness (Part III) and 02-Harness.md.

Commands

There is no prose binary. prose … is a command vocabulary the SKILL embodies in-session: the user (or an agent) types prose <verb> and the SKILL-loaded session performs it by mapping to host tools — not a shell-out to an installed package. The legacy @openprose/prose-cli (an Oclif binary) has been removed.

The SKILL also embodies the served lifecycle for responsibilities in-session: prose compile emits the compile-phase IR, prose serve runs a bounded reconcile pass over the active manifest, and prose status reads the receipt ledger back. A conforming harness (02-Harness.md) may deliver the same lifecycle durably, outside the session, behind a standing cron or HTTP ingress. The in-session command vocabulary:

Command	Role
prose compile [path] [--out <dir>]	Emit the compile-phase IR (topology, canonicalizers, validators, fingerprints, diagnostics) into dist/manifest.next.json
prose serve	Validate dist/manifest.active.json, register local cron and HTTP trigger adapters, launch bounded activations
prose status	Summarize active IR, diagnostics, trigger plan, recent runs, and responsibility status from the receipt ledger
prose run <file.prose.md|package/handle>	Run a responsibility or a called function in-session
prose test <path>	Execute kind: test contracts
prose lint <file.prose.md>	Validate source structure and contract consistency
prose preflight <file.prose.md>	Check dependencies and ### Environment without executing
prose inspect <run-id>	Inspect a completed run (std/evals/inspector)
prose install [--update]	Install and pin git-native dependencies
prose examples [name]	List or run bundled examples
prose upgrade [--dry-run]	Migrate legacy source/layout conventions (including the v0.15.0 kind/section rewrites)
prose write [request...]	Generate validated OpenProse source from rough English or pseudo-Prose (backed by std/ops/prose-author)

The host for an in-session prose run is the coding agent itself (Codex- or Claude-Code-style); there is no harness-selection binary. The durable form of the compile → run → serve lifecycle — a standing continuity loop, HTTP trigger surface, and connector ingress — is the harness's, specified in 02-Harness.md.

Dependencies

OpenProse dependencies are git-native and disk-only at runtime.

Canonical dependency identifiers use explicit git hosts:

github.com/openprose/prose/packages/std/evals/inspector
gitlab.com/alice/research/tools/summarizer
git.company.com/team/internal-system

Two first-party shorthands exist:

Shorthand	Expands to
std/...	github.com/openprose/prose/packages/std/...
co/...	github.com/openprose/prose/packages/co/...

prose install populates <openprose-root>/deps/ and writes <openprose-root>/prose.lock. Runtime resolution reads installed dependencies from disk. Missing dependency identifiers should fail with a message telling the user to run prose install.

Standard Library

packages/std/ is the standard library. It is not just helper text; it is a library of OpenProse contracts written in the language itself.

Category	Contents
roles/	10 atomic role contracts: classifier, critic, verifier, extractor, summarizer, formatter, researcher, writer, planner, router
patterns/	19 reusable coordination patterns: worker-critic, pipeline, map-reduce, fan-out, race, guard, fallback-chain, retry-with-learning, dialectic, oversight, ensemble-synthesizer, proposer-adversary, assumption-miner, blind-review, coherence-probe, contrastive-probe, ratchet, refine, stochastic-probe
ops/	Operational contracts: lint, preflight, wire, status, diagnose, profiler, plus prose-author (the backing contract for prose write, with a test suite)
delivery/	Human gate, email, Slack, webhook, HTML rendering, and file writing
memory/	Project and user memory contracts
evals/	Inspector, contract grader, regression tracker, cross-run differ, eval calibrator, system improver, platform improver, prose-contributor

Roles are the atoms; patterns are the molecules (slots, config, invariants, and delegation algorithms a responsibility instantiates). The eval and ops libraries make the feedback loop explicit: a run can be inspected, graded against contracts, compared across runs, diagnosed, profiled, and used to propose source or platform improvements.

Migration status: packages/std/ and packages/co/ are now migrated to the current vocabulary — zero kind: service, kind: system, or ### Ensures remain. Their contracts use kind: function (≈35 files), the unchanged kind: pattern (19), kind: test, and kind: responsibility (in std only — co is functions, patterns, and tests). (co keeps its on-disk directory names services/ and systems/ for path stability, even though the contracts inside are migrated.)

Company-As-Prose Package

packages/co/ is a first-party but domain-shaped package. It sits beside std, not inside it.

std is use-case agnostic. co is an opinionated starter kit for operating a company as an OpenProse-native repository. Current public contracts include:

Contract	Role
co/services/agent-readiness	Probe a company's website for agent-discoverability and plain-HTML readiness
co/systems/company-repo-checker	Verify a company-as-prose repo matches shared layout and contract expectations
co/evals/*	Evaluations for the package contracts

The package explicitly avoids OpenProse, Inc. private business logic. It is generic company-operations scaffolding. Its on-disk directory names (services/, systems/) are kept for path stability, but the contracts inside are migrated to the current function / responsibility vocabulary.

Examples

The examples under skills/open-prose/examples/ are OpenProse Native Repositories on the current vocabulary (their src/ carries only kind: function, kind: responsibility, and kind: gateway; no service, no system). Each uses:

src/      authored responsibility, gateway, and function contracts
dist/     compiled intent
runs/     bounded activation receipts
state/    durable responsibility/application state
deps/     installed dependencies
prose.lock

The shared lifecycle is:

# Embody and run the repository in-session:
prose run
# Or compile it and let a conforming harness serve the standing goal
# (02-Harness.md):
prose compile

Current standing-goal example repositories include stargazer-outreach, incident-briefing-room, customer-risk-radar, release-readiness, vendor-renewal-watch, research-inbox-triage, content-performance-loop, compliance-evidence-tracker, and competitor-activity. Each demonstrates the current architecture: a responsibility defines the standing goal, a gateway provides time/event ingress, the render (or a delegated function) composes the work, and the persisted world-model updates durable ledgers, registers, or histories.

The examples directory also contains minimal feature demos that each isolate one language feature:

Example	Demonstrates
declared-skills	### Skills resolution and the skill_unresolved diagnostic
declared-tools	### Tools resolution and the tool_unresolved diagnostic
auto-pocock	A non-interactive multi-step function pipeline adapting an external skill workflow
session-to-prose	Turning a working session into authored *.prose.md source

Tests And Release

The current repository validates the language surface at several layers (the repo-root tests/open-prose/ skill suite):

Layer	Coverage
Skill/spec conformance	tests/open-prose/ asserts the SKILL docs (contract-markdown, concepts, state, compiler) embody the current model — kinds, sections, the no-judge reconciler, and the world-model state shape
Compile-validation tests	Compile-phase IR shape (topology, canonicalizers, postconditions, contract fingerprints) and root resolution
CI workflows	Skill install smoke, OpenProse smoke, plugin manifest validation, and the skill conformance suite

The release process uses independent tracks (.version-bump.json): the skill track moves the SKILL and both plugin manifests together — SKILL.md, .claude-plugin/plugin.json, .codex-plugin/plugin.json — because the Claude Code marketplace deduplicates by manifest version. Harness implementations release on their own trains, outside this repository. There is no prose-cli release train (the binary was removed).

Mental Model

OpenProse is best understood as typed, inspectable agent software, built around the render atom (contract, evidence, prior world-model) → (new world-model, receipt):

• A prompt is useful for one-off work.
• A *.prose.md contract is useful when the work has a standing truth to keep current, roles, handoffs, retries, or a receipt.
• A kind: responsibility is the headline kind: a mounted DAG node whose maintained truth the reconciler keeps current; a kind: function is a called, stateless helper.
• Forme wires the responsibility DAG at compile time by matching ### Requires ↔ ### Maintains.
• The Prose VM is the agent-session runtime that performs each render.
• ProseScript is how authors pin choreography (including the intra-node call) when declaration is not enough.
• Responsibility Runtime keeps standing goals true across bounded renders via the dumb reconciler: cost scales with surprise, not the clock.
• std and co are proof that OpenProse programs can package reusable behavior like code.

Glossary

Term	Meaning
Activation	One bounded VM render, launched in-session by prose run or by a conforming harness's run/serve
Binding	A published declared output: the canonical world-model artifact a downstream subscribes to
Canonicalizer	The deterministic lowering of ### Maintains that maps a world-model to its fingerprints
Contract Markdown	The canonical *.prose.md source format
Facet	A #### part under ### Maintains: a named, independently-subscribable unit of truth (fingerprint unit + subscription symbol)
Fingerprint	A cheap token that moves iff the semantically-relevant content moved
Forme	Compile-phase wiring render that resolves ### Requires ↔ ### Maintains into the topology
Function	A called, stateless helper: ### Parameters → ### Returns, no world-model (renamed from service)
Gateway	Sugar for an external-driven responsibility; compiled into a trigger registration
OpenProse root	Root directory containing src, dist, runs, state, deps, and lock/env files
Pattern	Reusable coordination algorithm instantiated by a responsibility
Prose Complete	Host capability threshold for running OpenProse
Prose VM	Execution semantics (the render) embodied by the agent host
ProseScript	Imperative choreography language inside ### Execution and ### Delegation
Reconciler	The dumb run-phase model: compare fingerprints, skip / render / propagate (no judge)
Receipt	The signed commit object; status ∈ {rendered, skipped, failed}; the unit of the append-only ledger
Repository IR	The compile-phase IR (topology + canonicalizers + postconditions + contract fingerprints) consumed by deterministic infrastructure
Responsibility	The headline kind: a standing truth kept current over time, mounted as a DAG node
World-model	A node's maintained truth (the DOM analogue), persisted under state/world-model/{node}/

---

Part III — What Is Next

Part I is now substantially real at the language layer. The v0.15.0 "Intelligent React" overhaul reshaped the taught taxonomy to the Ideal (five kinds; the load-bearing ### Requires / ### Maintains / ### Continuity sections; facets; the dumb reconciler; receipts with status ∈ {rendered, skipped, failed}), and the corpus migration that once dominated this roadmap is done: packages/std/ and packages/co/ carry zero kind: service, kind: system, or ### Ensures, and the teaching docs (SKILL.md, contract-markdown.md, concepts/, changelog.md) are on the current model. The legacy prose CLI binary is gone; the language is embodied by the SKILL in-session, and the deterministic-source-compiler fallback it once carried is resolved by removal (compilation is model-run, Tenet 2). No new *.prose.md syntax is owed.

What remains is not language work but harness affordances the language already describes — promised by the contract an author writes, delivered by a conforming harness (02-Harness.md) — plus the one language-level recursion the Ideal keeps as its closing item. Each item below is scoped to the residual gap and cross-linked to the harness contract it depends on; a harness tracks its own engineering detail.

1. Data-driven freshness (the default valid_until projector)

Part I's self-driven continuity — a lapsed valid_until mechanically moves a facet fingerprint via the self-tick — needs a default projector in the served continuity loop. As of the reference harness 0.3.3 (see the repository README under Harnesses), its loop runs on a flat poll cadence and arms no per-facet valid_until by default, so ### Continuity: self-driven runs at a fixed interval rather than the Ideal's "wake exactly when the soonest valid_until lapses." The author already writes the valid_until; the cadence tightens harness-side without a source change. (02-Harness.md Open specification items §6.)

2. The deterministic commit gate, wired

### Maintains postconditions lower to deterministic validators (in the reference harness 0.3.3, compilePostconditions runs on the compile path), but the gate that evaluates them at commit, gateCommit, is built and unwired as of that release — the live commit rides the render's own ### Maintains self-attestation. The language promises "a render that cannot satisfy its postconditions commits nothing"; making that deterministic rather than self-attested is harness wiring, not a syntax change. (02-Harness.md invariant 6.)

3. The failed-receipt reason (durable receipt shape)

The language promises a failed receipt "addressed to the author, naming exactly what it needs." The v0 receipt the reference harness 0.3.3 ships is too thin to carry that — no as_of, no failure reason, no author-addressing field — so the naming is honored only in-render and dropped at commit. Widening the durable receipt is harness work the language's failed-receipt promise depends on. (02-Harness.md Open specification items §1.)

4. The actuation boundary, enforced

### Invariants declares the rate/scope/prohibited-action bounds on a render's world-mutation. Today that boundary is authored prose the render may ignore — never lowered or harness-enforced. Lowering it into the render (with an actuation sink) makes "the only writable surface is the published truth" a guarantee rather than a request. (02-Harness.md Metaphor, seam 2.)

5. Facet inference

Facets are author-declared today (#### parts under ### Maintains). Inferring a reasonable facet split from an undivided ### Maintains — so authors get subscription granularity without hand-faceting — is deferred compile-phase work; the atomic default is correct but coarse until then.

6. Richer served ingress

A served responsibility's wake sources beyond local cron-poll and HTTP — queues, file watches, provider subscription setup, and webhook authentication — are later harness phases. Until they land, a file-watch-shaped contract is authored as a poll ### Continuity with the intended ingress noted, so it migrates cleanly.

7. Cross-trust composition (the cryptographic signer)

### Requires can pin a consumed revision today, but the acceptable-signer-set half of cross-trust composition waits on a real signing identity: the receipt's sig is a meaning-layer attestation over a null signer, not a cryptographic byte-hash chain. A signing adapter and byte-hash chain are deferred. (02-Harness.md Open specification items §2.)

8. The fixpoint (topology-as-responsibility)

Part I keeps, as its closing recursion, the fixpoint: wiring the graph is itself a maintained truth, so Forme is a kind: responsibility whose world-model is the resolved DAG and whose render is the wiring step — memoized like any node, bootstrapped by a tiny deterministic seed. Today Forme is a compile-phase render that produces the topology but is not yet mounted as a node in the graph it draws. Closing the loop is explicitly post-v1.

Boundary with the harness

The language has one source-derived compile: prose compile (source → compile-phase IR). The IR is a function of the *.prose.md source set and nothing else. The harness's token-truth receipts, forecasts, freshness state, and reconciler decisions are sibling runtime state owned by the harness — not IR fields and not new *.prose.md syntax. The render seam (a bounded-activation agent SDK adapter over a model gateway) carries no reconciler control logic. The full runtime mechanics live in 02-Harness.md; this disclaimer is the language side of that seam.

Definition of done for the language layer

The corpus migration and the SKILL sweep that headlined earlier roadmaps are done (std/co and the teaching docs carry zero retired vocabulary). What remains is the harness delivering the language's standing promises:

• The default valid_until freshness projector and adaptive serve cadence ship, so self-driven continuity is data-driven rather than fixed-interval.
• gateCommit's deterministic validators are wired onto the live commit step, so "a render that cannot satisfy its postconditions commits nothing" is enforced, not only self-attested.
• The durable receipt carries as_of, a failure reason, and an author-addressing field, so the failed-receipt-that-names-the-gap survives commit.
• The ### Invariants actuation boundary is lowered and enforced at the render/commit split.
• No new *.prose.md syntax is introduced; the fixpoint remains the explicitly labeled post-v1 recursion.