SpecDossier keeps the terms of a Statement of Work, not its execution, and brings them to landing.

The dossier

A file in the project, found only where the project declares

What is SpecDossier's own is the dossier (ADR-001). A project declares where its dossiers live in .governance/dossiers.ncl, and SpecDossier finds them by that declaration and nowhere else (ADR-002). The format is schemas/dossier.ncl; the governed document is held by reference, and its content never enters the dossier:

• governs is one document of kind 'WorkOrder, 'Adr or 'Biop, or a list of several, related only by part_of and after. Nothing models priority (ADR-008).
• closing is declared at opening: a signature 'Required or 'None, at least one invited party as who:hat, and an optional expiry that closes it 'Blocked or 'Done.
• point answers a part (anchor) of the bytes it read, by digest. Its disposition is 'Incorporated, 'Declined with a reason, or 'Routed to somewhere; the contract refuses the last two without them.
• agreed fixes the version by its sha256, names who answers for it, carries every point of its round and the digest of each pre-flight report it was agreed on. With several documents, the set is agreed by the digest of its manifest: one <digest> <path> line per document, sorted by path.

A dossier's stage — opened, agreed, diverged — is derived from its files on each reading. A governed document that moves after its agreement reads diverged, naming both digests; restored, it reads agreed again.

Principles

It exposes; it does not act and does not judge

A dossier, end to end

From opening to a landing in the signed log

1. Open

   specdossier open writes the dossier where .governance/dossiers.ncl declares, on one governed document or several, with its closing terms and invited parties. The clock is never read: the day is an argument.

2. Round

   specdossier round puts the document, as it is in the person's copy, before the service: its bytes, their digest, and each pre-flight report run there. The round is transient and the service's; it is not mirrored, and losing it loses no agreement. The service never reads the project for a round.

3. Remark

   Each invited party, a guest included, logs in with the authority the round names and raises points on the parts of the document, each bound to the digest it read and carrying their own Authorize decision. A guest reads exactly what was put before them.

4. Hand

   specdossier hand gives a supervising agent the document with every point on the part it answers. What the agent returns is put as a new revision; it agrees nothing.

5. Agree

   specdossier agree writes into the dossier, in the person's copy, the digest of the version the round shows and every point dispositioned as N=incorporated, N=declined:<reason> or N=routed:<where>. It is refused naming each point still owed.

6. Attest

   When the closing asks for a signature, specdossier attest takes the signer's detached minisign signature over the agreed document — or over the set's manifest — to the round's authority, and prints the attestation once it verifies against the authority's pinned key.

7. Land

   specdossier land sends the agreed dossier. The service pushes it, the governed document byte for byte and the attestation to a branch under the prefix the project granted, never its main one, in one commit signed with its own key (ADR-005). Merging the branch is the project's decision.

8. Verify

   Every landing is an entry in a log only the service writes, each a commit signed with its key. specdossier verify-log checks a clone of it against an allowed_signers file; a tampered entry fails to verify.

After the agreement, a dossier's reading adds the trail of each SOW it governs as ontoref reads it: the registry's row, agreed_in, the signatures and the receipt. No landed stage is derived by SpecDossier, and nothing agreed in another dossier is claimed (ADR-011).

Components

A CLI in the person's copy, a service that orders and gives access

Every change to the workspace is a SOW, signed and landed with its signed receipt. What must keep holding is a standing SOW paid at every commit: a pre-commit gate asks ontoref what live SOWs owe and refuses the commit when one is red (ADR-010).

Boundaries

What SpecDossier is not

ontoref Gov

One domain in three layers: how a project governed by ontoref governs itself.

What it is

Gov is ontoref's own domain. It holds the arrangement — what a project's boundary declares, its members, which artefacts a consumer inherits — and the exercise — what work is committed and how an act is delivered. Its name is the root of governance, governability and government, and elects none of them.

Why

A decision, a boundary or a delivery that lives only in someone's memory binds no one. In Gov each one is a declaration a project can be held to, and what holds it is a mechanism, not a good intention.

What for

A project reaches Gov by bond, never by imposition, and takes only the parts it needs. In signature governance each project carries one: the contract, the operations of work, the signature, the dossier, the agreement and the signing on an agent's behalf. Beside them, the capabilities any state of governance uses: the host boundary, deployment, the observed session and the opening by name.

How governance is layered

Protocol · base

ontoref's base: bonds and planes, content bound by digest, the unsigned work order, the check form, and mandatum's types. Every project is written in it; a project can bond without adopting any governance.

Management and governability · gov

The gov domain, in ontoref: how the constellation is organised, its management modes, and decisions held by validators.

Signature governance · foedus

The foedus domain, provided by the foedus project and operated by warden: the agreement, each party's annex and the tests that prove it. A project is here because it is a party to the agreement.

Isolation, provisioning, wuwei and openbyname are capabilities any state of governance uses — the agent's boundary, deployment, sessions, and running tasks locally — not governance: governance needs them, they do not need governance.

Each project chooses its governance mode

Governability (coherence) · ontoref alone

Coherence only: ontoref checks that the declarations hold together. No signature.

Auditable governance · signature

The person signs. It detects a departure; it does not prevent it.

Applied governance · signature + isolation

Signature and isolation together. It prevents.

More about ontoref Gov →

Part of the same system

signature governance

capabilities