{
  "schema_version": "0.3.0",
  "last_reviewed": "2026-08-15",
  "name": "MNCS Atlas",
  "description": "Non-normative, machine-readable orientation map for the Machine-Native Complexity Standard project family and its reference operator stack.",
  "non_normative": true,
  "authority": "orientation-only",
  "canonical_human_guide": "https://epi13.github.io/mncs-atlas/",
  "canonical_repository": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-atlas",
  "schema": "https://epi13.github.io/mncs-atlas/schema/atlas.schema.json",
  "documentation": {
    "architecture": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-atlas/blob/main/docs/ARCHITECTURE.md",
    "operating_model": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-atlas/blob/main/docs/OPERATING_MODEL.md",
    "projects": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-atlas/blob/main/docs/PROJECTS.md",
    "terminology": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-atlas/blob/main/docs/TERMINOLOGY.md",
    "maturity": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-atlas/blob/main/docs/MATURITY.md",
    "machine_orientation": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-atlas/blob/main/docs/MACHINE_ORIENTATION.md",
    "agents": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-atlas/blob/main/AGENTS.md",
    "contributing": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-atlas/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md"
  },
  "freshness": {
    "policy": "Atlas is descriptive orientation. Verify implementation-sensitive claims against the owning repository before acting.",
    "status": "reviewed"
  },
  "maturity_model": {
    "semantics": "descriptive-not-ranked",
    "policy": "Maturity describes the current kind of commitment a family component makes. It is not a universal quality score and does not grant authority.",
    "levels": {
      "incubating": {
        "meaning": "Official family work whose problem and ownership are recognized but whose contracts, schemas, or conclusions are expected to change materially.",
        "dependency_policy": "Do not make sibling systems require an incubating component unless an explicit versioned adoption decision says otherwise."
      },
      "research": {
        "meaning": "Research work intended to discover, test, or characterize mechanisms and claims rather than provide a stable operational contract.",
        "dependency_policy": "Consume research results as scoped evidence or proposals, not governing truth."
      },
      "experimental": {
        "meaning": "A specification or system with a concrete usable contract that remains explicitly experimental and may change incompatibly.",
        "dependency_policy": "Bind by explicit versions and preserve UNKNOWN for unsupported behavior."
      },
      "active-infrastructure": {
        "meaning": "Infrastructure actively used in the reference operator environment while remaining non-normative unless separately specified.",
        "dependency_policy": "Respect lifecycle ownership and public service boundaries; operational use does not create conformance authority."
      },
      "orientation": {
        "meaning": "Documentation or discovery infrastructure whose purpose is to describe and route rather than govern implementation truth.",
        "dependency_policy": "Verify implementation-sensitive claims at the owning project before acting."
      }
    }
  },
  "consumer_contract": {
    "version": "0.1",
    "purpose": "Defines how humans and agents should consume Atlas without confusing orientation data with project authority.",
    "resolution_order": [
      "identify the requested capability or claim",
      "resolve the owning component by stable id and relationship records",
      "check maturity and authority_class",
      "follow the owning repository or governing specification",
      "verify implementation-sensitive facts before acting",
      "preserve UNKNOWN when evidence is missing or stale"
    ],
    "rules": [
      "Atlas never overrides a governing specification or owning repository.",
      "A relationship describes an explicit family boundary; it does not imply shared lifecycle ownership or transitive authority.",
      "Maturity is descriptive and never grants normative authority.",
      "Machine-readable provenance describes what is known about origin and transformation; it does not by itself decide authorship, ownership, or copyrightability.",
      "If Atlas and an owning project disagree about current implementation, treat Atlas as stale orientation and update it."
    ]
  },
  "invariants": [
    "Capability is not authority.",
    "Execution success is not conformance.",
    "Transport is not trust.",
    "Publication is not acceptance.",
    "Learning remains governed.",
    "Provenance is not authorship or ownership.",
    "Rights uncertainty remains explicit.",
    "Missing or insufficient evidence remains UNKNOWN."
  ],
  "projects": [
    {
      "id": "mncs",
      "name": "MNCS",
      "repository": "https://github.com/epi13/machine-native-complexity-standard",
      "role": "normative-implementation-evidence-standard",
      "maturity": "experimental",
      "authority_class": "normative-specification",
      "responsibility": "Normative implementation-evidence standard: technical acceptance, evidence and status semantics, schemas, RFCs, and claim boundaries."
    },
    {
      "id": "mncds",
      "name": "MNCDS",
      "repository": "https://github.com/epi13/machine-native-complexity-development-specification",
      "role": "development-process-specification",
      "maturity": "experimental",
      "authority_class": "normative-specification",
      "responsibility": "Independently versioned development-process specification governing decomposition, candidate lifecycle, evidence flow, selection, release, and related development controls."
    },
    {
      "id": "rights-provenance",
      "name": "MNCS Rights & Provenance",
      "repository": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-rights-provenance",
      "role": "machine-native-rights-and-provenance-specification",
      "maturity": "incubating",
      "authority_class": "non-normative-incubating-specification",
      "responsibility": "Experimental family-level specification for artifact origin, transformation lineage, contribution provenance, authorship uncertainty, rights basis, artifact licensing, and release-facing rights evidence without manufacturing legal certainty.",
      "integration_policy": "advisory-no-hard-runtime-dependency",
      "does_not_own": [
        "MNCS conformance",
        "MNCDS development-process authority",
        "Fabric execution lifecycle",
        "Commons truth",
        "automatic copyrightability or ownership determinations"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "mncs-language",
      "name": "MNCS Language",
      "repository": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-language",
      "role": "language-research",
      "maturity": "research",
      "authority_class": "research",
      "responsibility": "Verification-native language and semantic representation research, including contracts, effects, evidence, HIR, and SSA."
    },
    {
      "id": "forge",
      "name": "Forge",
      "repository": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-forge-mcp",
      "role": "development-and-evidence-control-plane",
      "maturity": "active-infrastructure",
      "authority_class": "non-normative-development-infrastructure",
      "responsibility": "Non-normative bounded development and evidence workflows, provider orchestration, lineage, evidence gaps, and evaluator-mode boundaries."
    },
    {
      "id": "fabric",
      "name": "Fabric",
      "repository": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-fabric",
      "role": "execution-substrate",
      "maturity": "active-infrastructure",
      "authority_class": "operator-execution-infrastructure",
      "responsibility": "Persistent exact-target execution, authenticated transport, worker presence, capability and resource observations, retries, and execution evidence."
    },
    {
      "id": "commons",
      "name": "Commons",
      "repository": "https://github.com/epi13/MNCS-Commons",
      "role": "coordination-and-knowledge-exchange",
      "maturity": "active-infrastructure",
      "authority_class": "coordination-and-institutional-memory",
      "responsibility": "Structured provenance-aware knowledge exchange and durable work coordination for observations, claims, requests, replications, advisories, and decisions."
    },
    {
      "id": "ravel",
      "name": "RAVEL",
      "repository": "https://github.com/epi13/RAVEL",
      "role": "adaptive-intelligence",
      "maturity": "research",
      "authority_class": "research-advisory",
      "responsibility": "Evidence strategy, scoped memory, causal interpretation, and reusable learning beneath MNCS and MNCDS authority."
    },
    {
      "id": "mnel",
      "name": "MNEL",
      "repository": "https://github.com/epi13/Machine-Native-Experimental-Learning",
      "role": "experimental-learning",
      "maturity": "research",
      "authority_class": "research-advisory",
      "responsibility": "Investigators, bounded interventions, causal attribution, negative memory, and verified-experience distillation."
    },
    {
      "id": "reference-studies",
      "name": "Reference Studies",
      "repository": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-reference-studies",
      "role": "empirical-research",
      "maturity": "research",
      "authority_class": "empirical-research",
      "responsibility": "Controlled empirical comparisons, case studies, reimplementations, reproducibility, and first-class negative results."
    },
    {
      "id": "rust-validator",
      "name": "Rust Validator",
      "repository": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-validator-rs",
      "role": "independent-validation",
      "maturity": "active-infrastructure",
      "authority_class": "bounded-independent-validator",
      "responsibility": "Independent offline validation for supported MNCS subsets without wrapping the Python implementation or executing evidence."
    },
    {
      "id": "atlas",
      "name": "Atlas",
      "repository": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-atlas",
      "role": "family-orientation",
      "maturity": "orientation",
      "authority_class": "orientation-only",
      "responsibility": "Family map, shared terminology, project boundaries, contributor pathways, operator-model documentation, and machine-readable orientation."
    }
  ],
  "operator_components": [
    {
      "id": "control",
      "name": "MNCS Control MCP",
      "role": "protected-remote-workspace-control",
      "authority_class": "deployment-operator-control",
      "visibility": "deployment-private",
      "responsibility": "Exposes an authorized development workspace, Git, process, project, tooling, and bounded MNCS adapters through a fail-closed sandboxed control surface.",
      "does_not_own": [
        "Fabric fleet lifecycle",
        "Harness routing policy",
        "Commons persistence",
        "MNCS conformance"
      ],
      "orientation": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-atlas/blob/main/docs/OPERATING_MODEL.md"
    },
    {
      "id": "mncs-harness",
      "name": "MNCS Harness",
      "repository": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-harness",
      "role": "model-tool-policy-and-deployment-acceptance",
      "authority_class": "deployment-operator-policy",
      "visibility": "deployment-private",
      "responsibility": "Reusable operator infrastructure for workspace meaning, model and tool routing, approvals, agent loops, deployment-level result acceptance, and escalation while consuming persistent Fabric and Commons services. Not a normative MNCS requirement.",
      "does_not_own": [
        "Fabric exact-target admission or transport",
        "Commons truth or command authority",
        "MNCS normative status"
      ],
      "orientation": "https://github.com/epi13/mncs-atlas/blob/main/docs/OPERATING_MODEL.md"
    }
  ],
  "relationships": [
    {
      "from": "mncds",
      "to": "mncs",
      "kind": "versioned-binding",
      "description": "MNCDS may bind to MNCS implementation-evidence results through explicit versioned contracts without sharing or rewriting MNCS normative authority."
    },
    {
      "from": "control",
      "to": "mncs-harness",
      "kind": "bounded-adapter",
      "description": "Control may expose MNCS Harness capabilities while preserving Harness routing, policy, and acceptance ownership."
    },
    {
      "from": "control",
      "to": "fabric",
      "kind": "consumer",
      "description": "Control consumes the persistent Fabric service and does not own the worker registry, trust material, or fleet lifecycle."
    },
    {
      "from": "control",
      "to": "commons",
      "kind": "consumer",
      "description": "Control consumes bounded Commons interfaces and does not own the Commons store or service lifecycle."
    },
    {
      "from": "mncs-harness",
      "to": "fabric",
      "kind": "consumer",
      "description": "Harness chooses or pins model/tool work; Fabric owns exact-target admission, transport, execution, and execution evidence."
    },
    {
      "from": "mncs-harness",
      "to": "commons",
      "kind": "mediated-consumer",
      "description": "Harness mediates bounded Commons tools for local and Fabric-backed models while retaining tool policy."
    },
    {
      "from": "forge",
      "to": "fabric",
      "kind": "execution-consumer",
      "description": "Forge may delegate bounded execution to Fabric while preserving evidence-workflow lineage and evaluator boundaries."
    },
    {
      "from": "forge",
      "to": "mncs",
      "kind": "delegated-validation",
      "description": "Forge does not self-promote results; governing implementation-evidence validation remains with MNCS."
    },
    {
      "from": "forge",
      "to": "mncds",
      "kind": "delegated-validation",
      "description": "Forge does not self-promote results; governing development-process validation remains with MNCDS."
    },
    {
      "from": "commons",
      "to": "ravel",
      "kind": "scoped-knowledge-input",
      "description": "RAVEL may learn from governed Commons records without turning publication into truth."
    },
    {
      "from": "commons",
      "to": "mnel",
      "kind": "scoped-knowledge-input",
      "description": "MNEL may use scoped records and outcomes as experimental inputs while preserving their evidence status."
    },
    {
      "from": "reference-studies",
      "to": "mncs",
      "kind": "empirical-challenge",
      "description": "Reference Studies test bounded claims under frozen protocols; study outcomes do not silently rewrite the standard."
    },
    {
      "from": "fabric",
      "to": "rights-provenance",
      "kind": "provenance-evidence-source",
      "description": "Fabric execution receipts can provide bounded origin, target, runtime, and transformation evidence to Rights & Provenance without making Fabric a legal evaluator or making Rights & Provenance a Fabric runtime dependency."
    },
    {
      "from": "forge",
      "to": "rights-provenance",
      "kind": "provenance-analysis-source",
      "description": "Forge lineage, source references, candidate history, and evidence-gap analysis can inform rights/provenance records while legal conclusions remain outside Forge authority."
    },
    {
      "from": "commons",
      "to": "rights-provenance",
      "kind": "institutional-memory",
      "description": "Commons may preserve rights findings, decisions, questions, provenance observations, and superseded interpretations; publication does not turn a legal assertion into truth."
    },
    {
      "from": "rights-provenance",
      "to": "mncs",
      "kind": "advisory-specification-input",
      "description": "Rights & Provenance may inform future MNCS release/evidence design only through explicit adoption; its incubating records are not MNCS conformance requirements."
    },
    {
      "from": "rights-provenance",
      "to": "mncds",
      "kind": "advisory-specification-input",
      "description": "Rights & Provenance may inform future contribution, release, and artifact-governance process rules only through explicit MNCDS adoption."
    },
    {
      "from": "rights-provenance",
      "to": "mnel",
      "kind": "artifact-governance-input",
      "description": "Rights/provenance classifications may describe experimental corpora and derived artifacts without making the Rights & Provenance project a gate for current MNEL operation."
    }
  ],
  "entry_points": [
    {
      "goal": "Understand acceptance, evidence semantics, or conformance",
      "start_with": ["mncs"],
      "note": "Read the governing MNCS standard before tool-specific documentation."
    },
    {
      "goal": "Understand development-process governance or candidate lifecycle",
      "start_with": ["mncds"],
      "note": "MNCDS is independently versioned from MNCS."
    },
    {
      "goal": "Understand artifact provenance, rights basis, authorship uncertainty, or machine-native contribution lineage",
      "start_with": ["rights-provenance"],
      "note": "Rights & Provenance is incubating and non-normative. Treat provenance as evidence, not an automatic legal conclusion."
    },
    {
      "goal": "Develop or evaluate a candidate with declared evidence workflows",
      "start_with": ["forge", "mncs", "mncds"],
      "note": "Forge is non-normative; validators retain the authority assigned to them."
    },
    {
      "goal": "Route model and guarded tool work",
      "start_with": ["mncs-harness"],
      "note": "This is deployment policy, not MNCS conformance. Harness is not a normative MNCS requirement."
    },
    {
      "goal": "Operate the development workspace remotely",
      "start_with": ["control"],
      "note": "Control is a protected workspace surface and service consumer."
    },
    {
      "goal": "Run a bounded workload on an exact worker",
      "start_with": ["fabric"],
      "note": "Execution evidence does not itself establish conformance."
    },
    {
      "goal": "Share durable findings, work, replications, or decisions",
      "start_with": ["commons"],
      "note": "Publication is not acceptance."
    },
    {
      "goal": "Learn from governed outcomes or run bounded experiments",
      "start_with": ["ravel", "mnel", "commons"],
      "note": "Learning remains advisory until governed."
    },
    {
      "goal": "Challenge claims empirically or validate supported records independently",
      "start_with": ["reference-studies", "rust-validator", "mncs"],
      "note": "Keep study-local and validator-local authority explicit."
    }
  ]
}