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The Open Derivation Spec (ODS)

The Open Derivation Spec (ODS) is the open standard at the heart of "open spec = no lock-in." It lives in spec/ and is the authoritative contract the SDK validates against.

  • derivation.schema.json: the machine-readable contract (JSON Schema 2020-12). Authoritative.
  • derivation.md: normative prose.
  • tests/: conformance fixtures run by CI; the executable definition of the standard.

The SDK loads this schema as data and validates against it; it never mirrors the schema's constraints in Python. The bundled copy in the package is asserted byte-identical to the canonical spec/ file by a test, so the two cannot drift.

The spec is versioned on its own SemVer line, independent of the SDK. Each SDK release declares the spec version it implements via elbi_core.SPEC_VERSION.

from elbi_core import SPEC_VERSION, is_valid_manifest, validate_manifest

SPEC_VERSION  # -> "1.1"

validate_manifest(my_manifest)  # raises SpecValidationError if invalid
is_valid_manifest(my_manifest)  # -> bool