Public Contracts

Overview

This page documents the stable public contracts that InvarLock exposes for reports, verification, evidence packs, calibration artifacts, and policy packs. These contracts are intended to be consumed as-is by automation, review, and auditing workflows.

InvarLock is pre-1.0 as a package, but the core evidence-artifact surfaces are versioned and intended to be stable within their declared contract versions.

The public contract surface covers:

evaluation.report.json semantics and report schema validation
invarlock verify JSON and exit semantics, including runtime-manifest provenance for container-backed outputs via runtime.manifest.json
evidence-pack manifest format and strict verification rules
plugin ABI compatibility rules
adapter capability metadata
runtime tiers/profiles and calibration artifact semantics
policy digests, policy provenance, and policy-pack verification

Versioned sub-contracts

Sub-contract	Version field	Current value	Canonical source
Report schema	`evaluation.report.json.schema_version`	`v1`	`invarlock.reporting.report_schema.REPORT_JSON_SCHEMA`
Evidence-pack format	`manifest.json.format`	`evidence-pack-v1`	`contracts/evidence_pack_manifest.schema.json`
Verifier output	`invarlock verify --json.format_version`	`verify-v1`	`contracts/verify_output.schema.json`
Runtime manifest	`runtime.manifest.json.verifier_contract_version`	`runtime-manifest-v1`	`contracts/runtime_manifest.schema.json`
CLI stability policy	policy identifier	`cli-stability-v1`	`docs/reference/cli.md`
Adapter/model support tiers	`support_matrix.support_tiers[]`	`published_basis`, `supported_experimental`, `community_experimental`	`contracts/support_matrix.json`

Compatibility rules:

Within a v1 contract, new optional fields may be added and consumers should ignore fields they do not understand.
Removing a required field, renaming a field, changing a field type, or changing pass/fail semantics requires a new version value.
Report, evidence-pack, runtime-manifest, and verifier validators fail closed on mismatched explicit version fields.
Optional report blocks can graduate into the required core only with a report schema version bump.

Machine-readable contract files

Contract	Path	Purpose
Support matrix	`contracts/support_matrix.json`	Normalized support tiers and public evidence references
Model family catalog	`contracts/model_family_catalog.json`	Broader inventory for declared support, code-level coverage, usage-only checkpoints, and recommended additions
Model classification	`contracts/model_classification.json`	Lifecycle classification for published, backlog, blocked, smoke-only, usage-only, and out-of-scope model inventory, plus blocked named checkpoints
Adapter capabilities	`contracts/adapter_capabilities.json`	Snapshot/restore, guard coverage, runtime limits, extras
Plugin compatibility	`contracts/plugin_compatibility.json`	Core ABI policy and failure mode
Runtime manifest	`contracts/runtime_manifest.schema.json`	Runtime provenance schema for `runtime.manifest.json` sidecars
Verify output	`contracts/verify_output.schema.json`	JSON output schema for `invarlock verify --json`
Evidence-pack manifest	`contracts/evidence_pack_manifest.schema.json`	Portable pack manifest schema for `verify_pack.sh`, including builder/subject/material signed provenance fields
Policy pack	`contracts/policy_pack.schema.json`	Build/verify contract for Git-native policy packs
Validation keys	`contracts/validation_keys.json`	Allow-list for report validation flags
Console labels	`contracts/console_labels.json`	Stable report console labels
Metric kinds	`contracts/metric_kinds.json`	Stable metric kind catalog for report surfaces

These JSON files are included in installed wheels under invarlock/_data/contracts/*.json. The logical public contract names remain contracts/<name>.json, and invarlock.public_contracts resolves them from the repo checkout when present or from packaged wheel data otherwise.

The public contract catalog exposes the model lifecycle ledger and list-shaped files as first-class entries too: model_classification, validation_keys, console_labels, and metric_kinds are surfaced by invarlock.public_contracts.contract_catalog() and embedded in the JSON payloads emitted by invarlock doctor --json and invarlock advanced plugins ... --json.

CLI surfaces

The CLI exposes these contracts directly:

invarlock verify --json
invarlock advanced runtime-verify --json
invarlock advanced plugins list --json
invarlock advanced plugins adapters --json
invarlock doctor --json
invarlock advanced evidence-pack verify --json
invarlock advanced policy build
invarlock advanced policy verify --json
scripts/evidence_packs/verify_pack.sh --pack <dir> --strict --report-assurance strict

The first eight surfaces are available from installed packages. The low-level invarlock advanced runtime-verify command is the package-native runtime-manifest verifier used for direct report/manifest checks. The repo shell verifier remains available for evidence-pack workflow maintainers, and pure wheel installs can verify packs with invarlock advanced evidence-pack verify.

Third-party plugins are fail-closed on ABI declaration: adapters, edits, and guards must declare INVARLOCK_CORE_ABI, and the value must match the exact core ABI published in contracts/plugin_compatibility.json.

For support-related automation, plugins adapters --json and doctor --json expose both the strict support_matrix contract and the broader model_family_catalog contract. Lifecycle decisions such as published, backlog, blocked, usage_only, and out_of_scope live in model_classification, so license/access changes can be handled by editing the manifest and rerunning make contracts-check instead of searching every support surface by hand. The same JSON surfaces also include the validation_keys, console_labels, and metric_kinds entries from the public contract catalog.

The versioned JSON surfaces are intentionally explicit:

invarlock doctor --json emits format_version: "doctor-v1"
invarlock verify --json emits format_version: "verify-v1"
invarlock advanced runtime-verify --json emits format_version: "runtime-verify-v1"
invarlock advanced plugins list --json and invarlock advanced plugins adapters --json emit format_version: "plugins-v1"
invarlock advanced policy verify --json emits format_version: "policy-pack-verify-v1"
invarlock advanced evidence-pack verify --json emits format_version: "evidence-pack-verify-v1" and nests the bundled report verification result under verify.format_version: "verify-v1"

The CLI stability policy covers command names, documented options, exit-code meaning, and the required fields of the listed JSON envelopes. Commands under advanced remain outside the core user loop, but the JSON surfaces listed here are public automation contracts.

Adapter support tiers

Adapter availability and public assurance support are separate concepts. contracts/adapter_capabilities.json describes whether an adapter can load, snapshot, restore, and expose guard-compatible modules. contracts/support_matrix.json describes the public support tier for a model/runtime/adapter lane.

Tier	Meaning
`published_basis`	Maintained public evidence floor with report, runtime-manifest, and evidence-pack provenance where available.
`supported_experimental`	Repo ships preset/config/test/smoke paths, but no published-basis fixture set is claimed.
`community_experimental`	Adapter/runtime path is usable for community experimentation without a maintained public evidence basis.

Policy packs that declare compatibility.support_tiers must use one of those three tier values.

Packaged public contract data

The maintained public contract data ships in two places:

installed wheels, under invarlock/_data/contracts/*.json
source tags in the repository

Repo tags and installed wheels are the only maintained public contract carriers.

The support-matrix published-basis evidence paths remain logical public_evidence/published_basis/... references. Source repository tags carry the full public evidence artifacts at those paths: reports, runtime manifests, evidence-pack recipes, signed packs where present, and guard-value demo packages.

Installed wheels intentionally do not duplicate the full published-basis artifact tree. Instead, they ship the compact generated index at invarlock/_data/public_evidence/published_basis_index.json. That index records the published-basis entries, logical source paths, lane IDs, file hashes, sizes, directory control-file hashes, and the carrier policy. Wheel users can inspect which public evidence exists and where it lives in the source tag; verifying or rendering the full public evidence artifacts requires the repository source tree or an explicit artifact copy.

Policy packs

Policy packs are Git-native artifacts that bind:

resolved_policy
ordered overrides
a deterministic policy_digest
compatibility metadata
optional approval metadata

Build and verify them with:

invarlock advanced policy build \
  --resolved-policy resolved_policy.json \
  --overrides overrides.json \
  --compatibility compatibility.json \
  --out policy-pack.json

invarlock advanced policy verify policy-pack.json --json