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Build Specification

The Build Specification is the central artifact of the factory pipeline. It is the process layer's output and the adapter layer's input: a structured, technology-free document that captures everything an adapter needs to scaffold an application, without naming any framework, language, or file path.

What it captures

The Build Specification (build-spec.schema.yaml) describes an application in technology-neutral terms:

SectionContent
projectProject identity, description, and classification.
authAuthentication requirements per audience, provisioning models, service-to-service policies, and session configuration.
data_modelEntities, their attributes, relationships, and constraints.
business_rulesValidation rules, authorization rules, and domain logic expressed as predicates.
apiOperations (CRUD and custom), their inputs, outputs, authorization, and stack assignments.
uiPages, their page types, view types, audience assignments, and navigation structure.
integrationsExternal system connections and their implementation status.
notificationsNotification channels and triggers.
auditAudit logging requirements.
securitySecurity policies beyond authentication.
traceabilityMapping from use cases and test cases back to requirements.

Every section uses technology-neutral vocabulary. The api section names operations and resources, not endpoints or HTTP methods. The ui section names pages and page types, not components or routes. Technology-specific decisions are the adapter's responsibility.

Where it freezes

The Build Specification is progressively built through Stages 1 to 5 and frozen at Stage 5 (UI Specification). Once frozen, the specification is immutable for the remainder of the run. Stage 6 (Adapter Handoff) reads the frozen specification and scaffolds the application against it.

The freeze point is protected by a human approval gate (declared in the governance envelope as the approval-before-build-spec-freeze predicate). No automated process may modify the specification after this gate passes.

The contract examples

The repository includes a worked example under contract/examples/: a complete Build Specification for an event-registration portal that exercises most schema sections, including dual audiences with different provisioning models, multiple entity types, business rules, and both public and internal API operations.

Relationship to the contract

The Build Specification schema is one of the five contract schemas. Its canonical home is the Open Agentic Platform repository; this repository mirrors version 1.1.0. The schema defines the vocabulary the process may express; adapters consume it without modification.