08. Documentation Contract

The Project Constitution is the sole authority for Seraph's product definition and accepted target architecture. Its ADRs own locked decisions. No roadmap, research document, issue, or archived strategy document can define a competing target.

Ownership

Surface	Owns	Does not own
Project Constitution and ADRs	Product definition, accepted target, vocabulary, invariants	Shipped capability claims or live execution state
docs/implementation/STATUS.md and implementation guides	Shipped/Partial behavior on develop, validation, operator contracts	Target architecture or project queue
docs/research/	Evidence, alternatives, dated comparisons, uncertainty	Accepted target or shipped truth
/legacy and explicit archived stubs	Historical context and links to Git history	Current instructions, roadmap, or supported behavior
GitHub Project, issues, and PRs	Queue, ownership, review, integration, completion receipts	Product constitution

Status Rules

Capabilities use exactly these lifecycle states:

• Shipped — available on develop with named proof.
• Partial — usable on develop with named missing boundaries.
• Experimental — opt-in canary with explicit limits and rollback.
• Planned — accepted tracked work with no shipped implementation.
• Deprecated — present temporarily with a replacement/removal issue.
• Excluded — intentionally outside Seraph's capability boundary.

Target, Research, Archived, and Blocked classify decisions, documents, or work—not capabilities. A capability must never be labeled Target. Configured state, a branch-local change, or a deterministic fixture is not evidence of Shipped.

Change Rules

• Change the accepted target only through the constitution and a new or superseding ADR, tracked issue, and independent Critic/Contrarian review.
• Update STATUS and the owning implementation guide when merged behavior changes.
• Preserve legitimate transitional shipped facts, but label Deprecated paths and name their replacement/removal issue.
• Keep research comparative claims dated, sourced, and separate from decisions.
• Archived stubs may summarize provenance and link Git history; they must not contain executable prompts, commands, TODO sequences, or imperative roadmaps.
• Never mirror Project Queue, Code Review, PR, or slice state in documentation.

Required Checks

Run:

python3 scripts/check_docs_contract.py
python3 scripts/check_strategy_claims.py
cd docs && npm run typecheck && npm run build

The contract checker enforces canonical ownership, the mirrored public use-case block, public help links, capability/document status separation, ADR structure, sole root-route ownership, sidebar placement, and non-operational archive stubs. Docusaurus treats broken links as build failures.

Historical Context

The previous master roadmap and parity program remain discoverable only as historical summaries. Full content is preserved in Git history and closed issue #475. They are not active instructions or target owners.