Specification · Section 13 of 13
The standard and the products built on it
The direction of dependency: the standard predates and governs any product built on it, a product is only a consumer of it, and the naming and reference-implementation concerns are stated as separate matters.
- Direction of dependency, stated once and bindingly: the mechanical contract concept (2023) predates any product built on it. Earlier internal precursor explorations exist; where they overlap this specification, this specification governs. Nothing in this spec depends on, is gated by, or is owned through any product - a product is a consumer of the standard, nothing more.
- What a product does with the standard is the product’s own concern: a product may model contract capabilities as explicit port declarations so that a later flip from diagnostics to live validation is a deployment change rather than a redesign.
- Naming: “mechanical contract” (mekaniskt avtal) is the artifact and this project’s name; what any company or product built on it calls itself is a separate question, out of scope here.
- Building it: the reference implementation plan covers what the machine compiles to, which prior art it builds FROM (Marlowe’s architecture, DMN’s table checking, CEL’s guard discipline), and the phased Bun/TS build with the §2 receipt as golden test.