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Structured Context

Specification v0.5.0

SCS v0.5.0 (Current)

Section titled “SCS v0.5.0 (Current)”

The current version of the Structured Context Specification.

Theme: structured context is the governed context layer for any AI actor — chat assistants, autonomous agents, MCP tool invocations, and multi-agent workflows, not just chat.

What’s new in v0.5.0

Section titled “What’s new in v0.5.0”
  • The Domain Ontology replaces “concern” — the anchor change. A domain manifest’s flat concerns: list is replaced by a Domain Ontology: a domain-defined set of concepts, with an optional shallow taxonomy, a small set of typed relationships (depends-on, relates-to), and a satisfies mapping from each concept to the standards it addresses. Bundles of functional areas now carry type: concept (was type: concern).
  • Structured context for any AI actor, not just chat — a new normative model covers context resolved by (agent, intent) rather than by session, policy-as-context for tool and MCP-server permissions, and a checkpoint record answering “which version of which context governed this point in execution?”
  • Runtime decisions, no longer open questions — immutability is scoped to a single execution step, not a whole task; “in effect” means the latest approved bundle version (never a DRAFT); and context drift is defined mechanically, as two checkpoints in the same workflow resolving the same concept to different bundle versions.
  • Provenance and approval — a bundle’s provenance must carry version_approved_by and version_approved_at before it can carry a real semver version. A DRAFT bundle is exempt.
  • Tier terminology clarified, not renamed — some material describes coverage as “Corporate” and “Project” context, with “Personal” deferred. This is shorthand, not a fourth schema tier: “Corporate” maps to Meta-Tier + Standards-Tier together, “Project” maps to Project-Tier, and “Personal” has no schema tier and remains out of scope.

Breaking change

Section titled “Breaking change”

0.3’s flat concerns: list is retired in favor of the Domain Ontology, and type: concern is renamed to type: concept. No automated scs migrate helper ships with 0.5.0 — a deliberate call, not an oversight, since manual migration is cheap while 0.3 has few consumers. See the migration guide for the full path, including the one step that isn’t mechanical: converting a flat concern list into real ontology structure.

Version history

Section titled “Version history”
  • v0.5.0 (Current) — Domain Ontology, any-AI-actor context model, provenance approval
  • v0.3 (Previous) — Bundle type formalization
  • v0.2 — Import resolution
  • v0.1 — Initial specification

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”