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Version: v0.9.0a2
Spec

Protocol Open Questions

2 min readSpec contributor · Issue triagePlanning material

What this page is

Currently-unresolved questions tracked in the spec for community feedback. Planning and issue-tracking material; not an independent component spec.

Authoritative source: spec/stigmem-spec-v0.9.0a1.md

Section body

Each subsection below shows the most recent normative text from the spec source. When earlier spec drafts also contained text for the same subsection, those revisions are collapsed under a Revisions accordion beneath it.

Currently open​

Question
Direction
Disposition
1 · Cross-node garden membership
federation identity
A garden's members are resolved against the local node's entity_uri namespace. In a federated deployment, stigmem://node-a/user/alice may be unknown to node-b. How should guest membership work across nodes? Deferred to the pre-reset attestation-chain work federation design.
2 · Garden-scoped contradiction detection
data model
Currently contradiction detection operates on (entity, relation, scope). Should garden_id be a fourth dimension? Proposing: contradiction detection remains scope-only; garden isolation means garden-A facts and garden-B facts about the same entity do not contradict each other by default. An opt-in cross-garden contradiction check is a the pre-reset attestation-chain work concern.
3 · attested field and retraction
trust
If a fact was written in warn mode with attested: false, should a retraction require enforce mode to be trusted? Recommendation: attestation is per-fact, not per-operation. A retraction with attested: false is still a valid immutable record; query consumers can filter on attested.
4 · Garden capacity limits
operations
No current limit on number of gardens or members per garden. Operators should apply application-level limits; a future spec section may add advisory guidance.
Revisions before v1.0: the pre-reset spec-draft, pre-reset draft

From stigmem-spec-the pre-reset spec-draft.md:

Resolved in pre-reset:

  • §8.1 Entity URI scheme — resolved: formal stigmem:// scheme normative; informal deprecated with warning (§2.5).
  • §8.4 Capability negotiation requirement — resolved: capability negotiation required for federation-enabled nodes (§6.2).

Resolved in pre-reset:

  • Lint primitive vocabulary — resolved: lint promoted to first-class operation; §14 Lint Semantics normative; POST /v1/lint route; lint_scope MCP tool.
  • Entity fragmentation from case variation — resolved: strict normalizer on ingest (§2.6); case normalization and whitespace collapse applied to entity and source fields; migration 003 (entity_aliases table) for pre-pre-reset data.

Resolved in the pre-reset spec:

  • §8.2 Multi-node federation (3+ nodes) — resolved: §6.7 N-node backpressure patterns (draft); §6.8 scope propagation invariants (draft). The N-node model uses pairwise PeerDeclarations; gossip is not required. Relay backpressure and transitive scope enforcement are draft; to be validated by D1 correctness tests before final promotion.
  • §8.5 company-scoped federation permissiveness — resolved: company-scoped facts received from a peer MUST NOT be re-federated to third nodes (§6.8.2). The originating node's grant is non-transitive by default.

Remaining open:

  1. Intent envelope wire route. the pre-reset design work implemented fact model only. Intent envelope wired through pre-reset adapters (handoff, escalation, decision facts), but the full IntentEnvelope wire route is not yet implemented. Deferred to the pre-reset substrate work.

  2. Conflict resolution policy plugins. Should operators be able to register custom resolution functions? Deferred until a concrete use case emerges from the pre-reset design-partner window testing.

  3. Audit log retention. The federation audit log has no specified retention policy. Nodes SHOULD retain at least 7 days (time-based policy is a the pre-reset substrate work concern).

  4. Async lint job API. The synchronous lint route (§14.5) is sufficient for scopes under 100,000 facts. The async job API (GET /v1/lint/jobs/:job_id) is specified but not yet implemented. the pre-reset substrate work target.

  5. Async decay sweep API. The synchronous decay sweep (§15.4) is appropriate for moderate scope sizes. Async sweep for large scopes (>100,000 facts) follows the lint async pattern (§14.5); specified in §15.4 but deferred for implementation.

  6. Fuzzy entity resolver. Alias-based resolution (§2.6.6) handles canonical URI lookup. Semantic similarity matching (e.g. user:alice ≡ user:a.smith) is deferred to the pre-reset substrate work fuzzy resolver (Kompl-style 3-layer matcher).

  7. Synthesis aggregation strategy for contradicted facts. When synthesize_scope encounters a contradicted (entity, relation, scope) triple, it currently returns the highest-confidence value and annotates the output with contradicted: true. Whether synthesis should surface both values or attempt a weighted merge is an open question for the pre-reset substrate work.

From stigmem-spec-pre-reset draft.md:

  1. Cross-node garden membership. A garden's members are resolved against the local node's entity_uri namespace. In a federated deployment, stigmem://node-a/user/alice may be unknown to node-b. How should guest membership work across nodes? Deferred to the pre-reset attestation-chain work federation design.

  2. Garden-scoped contradiction detection. Currently contradiction detection operates on (entity, relation, scope). Should garden_id be a fourth dimension? Two facts could have the same (entity, relation, scope) but different garden_id values. Proposing: contradiction detection remains scope-only; garden isolation means garden-A facts and garden-B facts about the same entity do not contradict each other by default. An opt-in cross-garden contradiction check is a the pre-reset attestation-chain work concern.

  3. attested field and retraction. If a fact was written in warn mode with attested: false, should a retraction (same entity/relation/scope with confidence=0.0) require enforce mode to be trusted? Recommendation: attestation is per-fact, not per-operation. A retraction with attested: false is still a valid immutable record; query consumers can filter on attested.

  4. Garden capacity limits. No current limit on number of gardens or members per garden. Operators should apply application-level limits; a future spec section may add advisory guidance.

(Prior open questions §8.1–§8.6 from the pre-reset spec are unchanged.)

Subsection anchors​

Anchors below are provided so docs links to specific subsections always resolve, even when the subsection text lives only in earlier spec drafts.

§8.5​