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Kontextual Engine Functional Requirements Specification V0.2

kontextual-engine

Prepared: 2026-05-05
Document type: Functional requirements specification
Status: Scope refinement draft
Aligned with: ProductRequirementsDocument.V0.2.md and INTENT.refined.md


1. System Overview

1.1 Product Summary

kontextual-engine is a headless knowledge operations engine for making heterogeneous information assets persistent, contextual, governed, retrievable, transformable, and agent-operable.

The system provides reusable backend capabilities for applications, workflows, services, and AI agents that need to operate documents, files, records, notes, datasets, generated outputs, and content collections as durable knowledge assets.

This Functional Requirements Specification defines the externally observable functional behavior of the system. It does not prescribe a specific storage backend, search engine, AI provider, user interface, deployment model, or source-system implementation.


1.2 Functional Scope

The FRS covers the following functional areas:

  • knowledge asset registry and persistent identity
  • ingestion from heterogeneous formats and sources
  • normalization and extraction into common representations
  • metadata, classification, context modeling, and relationships
  • search, filtering, querying, and permission-aware retrieval
  • transformation, composition, and traceable derived artifacts
  • workflow and job orchestration
  • permissions, policy enforcement, governance, audit, and lifecycle behavior
  • versioning, provenance, and dependency traceability
  • agent-safe AI interaction through explicit operations
  • API-first access, integration, and extensibility
  • observability, administration, export, portability, and error handling

The system is not specified as a finished ECM, DMS, CMS, intranet, visual editor, file-sync client, pure vector database, or single-purpose AI chat application. Those may be built on top of the engine or integrated with it.


1.3 Functional Operating Model

The expected functional flow is:

knowledge sources
  -> ingestion and normalization
  -> stable knowledge asset identity
  -> metadata, context, relationships, provenance, permissions, and lifecycle state
  -> governed retrieval, transformation, workflow, and agent-safe operation
  -> APIs, automation interfaces, exports, and downstream applications

The engine owns the middle layer: durable identity, context, governance, retrieval, transformation, workflow state, traceability, and operational interfaces.


1.4 Requirement Priority Model

Functional requirements use the following priority levels:

  • P0 — Core engine requirement: required for a credible MVP of the knowledge operations engine.
  • P1 — Enterprise readiness requirement: required for strong corporate adoption, governance, scale, and operational maturity.
  • P2 — Expansion requirement: useful for mature deployments, vertical packages, advanced workflows, or broader market coverage.

2. Actors and Interfaces

2.1 Primary Actors

Actor Description Typical Functional Needs
Human knowledge worker A person using applications built on the engine. Search, inspect, validate, compose, review, and reuse knowledge assets.
Developer A person building applications, integrations, workflows, extensions, or services on the engine. Stable APIs, schemas, events, SDKs, predictable errors, and testable behavior.
Platform operator A person managing engine operation. Ingestion status, job control, re-indexing, observability, audit access, and recovery tools.
Business process owner A person responsible for a knowledge workflow, governance rule, or lifecycle process. Workflow definition, approval rules, policy checks, exceptions, and reporting.
Reviewer or approver A human participant in validation, correction, approval, or publication workflows. Review queues, source context, decisions, comments, and audit trail.
External application A product or service that uses the engine through APIs. Asset operations, search, retrieval, workflow invocation, and export.
Automation system Deterministic automation invoking recurring jobs or workflows. Scheduled ingestion, enrichment, validation, transformation, synchronization, and archival.
AI agent An AI system acting through explicit tool-like operations. Bounded context access, source-grounded retrieval, transformations, workflow actions, and review submission.
Source system A file store, repository, database, content system, document platform, or business application supplying assets. Connector-mediated ingestion, permission context, metadata, source references, and update events.
Downstream system A target application, storage location, publication channel, archive, or workflow system receiving outputs. Exported assets, derived artifacts, events, and lineage-preserving integration.

2.2 System Interfaces

Interface Required Role
Service API Primary interface for asset, metadata, retrieval, transformation, workflow, permission, audit, export, and agent operations.
Programmatic API or SDK Developer-facing abstraction over the service API where provided.
Connector and adapter interface Source-system and downstream-system integration boundary.
Workflow and job interface Submission, execution, tracking, retry, cancellation, and result inspection for jobs and workflows.
Agent operation interface Explicit bounded operations for AI agents with permission checks, audit logging, and review gates.
Admin and observability interface Operational inspection, error recovery, audit access, metrics, and governance reporting.
Export and portability interface Governed extraction of assets, metadata, relationships, versions, provenance, audit references, and derived artifacts.

2.3 Authorization Context

Every material operation should be evaluated against an authorization context containing, where available:

  • actor identity
  • delegated user or service context
  • role and group membership
  • asset-specific policy
  • source-system policy or effective permission data
  • sensitivity classification
  • lifecycle state
  • workflow state
  • operation type and requested output

AI agents must not receive implicit privileged access. They are actors with explicit scope, permissions, task boundaries, and audit requirements.


3. Functional Entities

Entity Functional Meaning
Knowledge asset A durable unit of knowledge managed by the engine, such as a file, document, record, dataset, note, generated output, or content item.
Asset ID Stable identifier assigned by the engine and used independent of path, filename, source URL, storage backend, or representation.
Source reference Information that identifies where an asset originated, including source system, path, URL, external ID, checksum, or connector reference where available.
Source representation The original or source-near form of the asset, preserved or referenced where configured.
Normalized representation Engine-usable representation created from ingestion and extraction, suitable for search, metadata, transformation, workflows, and agent context.
Metadata Structured descriptive information attached to an asset, including standard and custom fields.
Classification A label or category used for type, topic, sensitivity, lifecycle, operational purpose, or governance.
Contextual entity A non-asset entity such as person, project, case, customer, product, process, topic, source system, or business object.
Relationship A typed link between assets or between an asset and a contextual entity.
Version A traceable state of asset content, metadata, relationships, lifecycle, or derived artifact.
Derived artifact An output produced from one or more source assets through transformation, composition, extraction, summarization, generation, or workflow.
Transformation run A recorded operation that creates, updates, or derives information from assets.
Workflow run An executed instance of a workflow template or job definition.
Policy A rule or rule set controlling permissions, lifecycle, retention, review, transformation, publication, export, or agent behavior.
Audit event A record of a material operation, actor, target, time, outcome, and relevant policy context.
Export package A governed package containing selected assets and supporting metadata, relationships, versions, provenance, audit references, and manifests.

4. Functional Requirements

Each requirement below specifies externally observable system behavior. Verification should be possible through API contract tests, integration tests, workflow tests, permission tests, audit-log inspection, export validation, or operator-facing status inspection.

4.1 Knowledge Asset Registry and Persistence

ID Priority Requirement Functional Behavior Acceptance Signal
FR-001 P0 Create knowledge assets The system shall create a knowledge asset from submitted content, structured data, or a source reference. A caller can submit content or a source reference and receive a persisted asset record with an asset ID and initial state.
FR-002 P0 Assign stable asset identity The system shall assign an asset ID that remains stable across rename, move, re-ingestion, representation change, and transformation. An asset can change path, filename, source representation, or normalized representation without losing its asset ID or history.
FR-003 P0 Persist asset state The system shall persist asset content references, normalized content, metadata, relationships, lifecycle state, permissions, provenance, and operational status where available. A persisted asset can be retrieved with its current content reference, normalized representation, metadata, relationships, lifecycle state, and provenance.
FR-004 P0 Retrieve assets by identifier The system shall retrieve a knowledge asset by stable asset ID. A valid asset ID returns the matching asset or an explicit permission or not-found error.
FR-005 P0 Update asset content and metadata The system shall update asset content, normalized representation, metadata, relationships, and lifecycle state through explicit operations. Updates are persisted, audit logged, and visible through subsequent retrieval calls.
FR-006 P0 Retire or delete assets under policy The system shall support asset retirement, soft deletion, and deletion requests subject to lifecycle, retention, legal hold, and permission checks. A deletion request either changes the asset to the expected terminal state or returns a structured policy error.
FR-007 P0 Group assets into collections The system shall group assets into collections, domains, projects, spaces, or equivalent organizational containers. Assets can be assigned to and retrieved from one or more configured containers.
FR-008 P0 Represent original and normalized forms The system shall distinguish between source/original representation and normalized representation used for retrieval and workflows. A caller can inspect source reference data and normalized content without confusing the two representations.
FR-009 P1 Detect duplicate or repeated ingestion The system should identify likely duplicate assets or repeated ingestion events using configured identity, source, checksum, or fingerprint rules. Repeated ingestion of the same source can update the existing asset or produce a duplicate warning according to configured policy.
FR-010 P1 Support aliases and supersession The system should support aliases, redirects, canonical asset references, and supersession relationships. A renamed, replaced, or superseded asset remains discoverable through configured aliases or successor references.

4.2 Ingestion and Normalization

ID Priority Requirement Functional Behavior Acceptance Signal
FR-020 P0 Submit ingestion jobs The system shall create ingestion jobs from direct uploads, local or remote source references, connector events, or API requests. A caller can submit an ingestion request and receive a job ID with observable status.
FR-021 P0 Ingest baseline heterogeneous formats The system shall support ingestion of text, markdown, common office documents, PDFs, and structured datasets in the baseline implementation. Each baseline format can be ingested into a knowledge asset with normalized content and source provenance.
FR-022 P0 Record ingestion provenance The system shall record source system, source location, source identifier, ingestion time, extractor, transformation path, and actor where available. Each ingested asset can report where it came from, when it was ingested, and how it was extracted.
FR-023 P0 Normalize content The system shall convert ingested content into a common internal representation suitable for search, metadata, relationships, transformations, and workflows. Assets from different supported formats can be queried and transformed through common APIs.
FR-024 P0 Extract structural elements The system shall extract structural elements such as title, sections, headings, paragraphs, tables, links, and embedded references where supported by the source format. The normalized representation exposes structure when the extractor can recover it.
FR-025 P0 Expose ingestion status and failures The system shall expose queued, running, completed, failed, retried, and partially completed ingestion states. Operators and callers can inspect failure reason, affected assets, correlation ID, and retry options.
FR-026 P1 Support incremental re-ingestion The system should re-ingest changed sources without corrupting identity, version history, provenance, permissions, or relationships. A changed source can be synchronized while preserving the stable asset ID and creating a traceable update.
FR-027 P1 Support pluggable extractors and connectors The system should allow new source connectors and format extractors to be added without changing core engine behavior. A new connector or extractor can register capabilities, submit assets, and return normalized content through a defined contract.
FR-028 P1 Validate ingestion output The system should validate normalized content, required metadata, provenance, and policy constraints before marking ingestion complete. Invalid ingestion output produces structured validation errors and does not silently enter the trusted asset set.
FR-029 P2 Support advanced OCR and layout extraction The system may support OCR, visual layout extraction, table reconstruction, and image-region extraction for scanned or complex documents. A scanned or layout-heavy document can produce text, structure, and confidence signals where configured.
FR-030 P2 Support media-derived representations The system may create transcripts, captions, thumbnails, previews, embeddings, or metadata for image, audio, and video assets. Rich-media assets can expose derived representations suitable for retrieval and governance.

4.3 Metadata, Classification, and Context Modeling

ID Priority Requirement Functional Behavior Acceptance Signal
FR-040 P0 Manage explicit metadata The system shall create, read, update, and remove explicit metadata fields on knowledge assets. A caller can set and retrieve asset metadata through the API with audit logging.
FR-041 P0 Support standard metadata fields The system shall support standard metadata fields for asset type, owner, source, domain, project or context, sensitivity, lifecycle state, tags, timestamps, and custom labels. Standard metadata can be used consistently for filtering, permissions, workflows, and audit.
FR-042 P0 Support custom metadata schemas The system shall allow configured schemas for domain-specific metadata without hard-coding one domain model into the engine. A configured schema can validate and expose custom fields for a collection or asset type.
FR-043 P0 Assign classifications The system shall assign classifications such as document type, topic, sensitivity, lifecycle status, and operational category manually or through configured automation. Classifications can be stored, queried, corrected, and audited.
FR-044 P0 Define relationships between assets The system shall create, retrieve, update, and remove typed relationships between knowledge assets. Assets can be linked as source, derivative, reference, duplicate, successor, dependency, version, citation, or related item according to configured relationship types.
FR-045 P0 Represent contextual entities The system shall represent contextual entities such as people, teams, projects, cases, customers, products, processes, source systems, topics, and generated artifacts. Assets can be linked to contextual entities and retrieved through those links.
FR-046 P0 Query context The system shall allow querying assets by relationship, contextual entity, collection, source, metadata, and lifecycle state. A caller can retrieve all assets connected to a project, case, topic, person, process, or other configured entity.
FR-047 P1 Maintain relationship semantics The system should support relationship direction, type, validity interval, confidence, actor, and provenance. A relationship can indicate who or what created it, why it exists, and whether it is current, inferred, or manually confirmed.
FR-048 P1 Support inferred metadata review The system should distinguish inferred metadata or relationships from human-confirmed metadata or relationships. AI- or automation-generated annotations can be reviewed, accepted, corrected, or rejected.
FR-049 P1 Validate metadata against schemas The system should enforce required fields, data types, allowed values, and conditional rules according to configured schemas. Invalid metadata updates return structured validation errors.
FR-050 P2 Support domain-specific context packages The system may allow deployable domain packages for legal, support, research, compliance, engineering, or marketing semantics. A domain package can add schema, relationship types, workflow templates, and validation rules without redefining the core engine.

4.4 Search, Query, and Retrieval

ID Priority Requirement Functional Behavior Acceptance Signal
FR-060 P0 Retrieve by asset ID The system shall retrieve assets by stable asset ID through an API operation. A permitted caller receives the current asset record, selected representations, metadata, relationships, and provenance.
FR-061 P0 Search by text The system shall support text search across normalized content for supported ingested assets. A query returns matching assets with relevance ordering and result metadata.
FR-062 P0 Filter by metadata and lifecycle state The system shall support filtering by asset type, collection, source, owner, tags, classification, sensitivity, lifecycle state, and timestamps. A query can combine text search with metadata and lifecycle filters.
FR-063 P0 Retrieve by relationship and context The system shall support retrieval by relationships and contextual entities. A caller can retrieve assets related to a given project, case, topic, source asset, generated artifact, or workflow run.
FR-064 P0 Return source-grounded result data The system shall return asset IDs, titles, snippets or matched regions, relevant metadata, source references, and relationship context where available. Search results provide enough information to inspect why a result was returned and where it originated.
FR-065 P0 Enforce permission-aware retrieval The system shall apply permission and policy checks before returning asset content, metadata, snippets, derived artifacts, or relationship data. Unauthorized assets do not appear in results, snippets, generated answers, exports, or relationship traversals.
FR-066 P0 Support stable pagination and sorting The system shall support deterministic pagination and sorting for query results. Repeated equivalent queries return stable pages within documented consistency limits.
FR-067 P1 Support facets and aggregations The system should return facets or aggregations for configured metadata and classifications. A caller can display counts by source, type, owner, sensitivity, lifecycle state, or configured taxonomy.
FR-068 P1 Support semantic retrieval The system should support semantic or vector-based retrieval in addition to lexical search where configured. A semantic query can return relevant assets even when exact terms differ, while preserving permissions and provenance.
FR-069 P1 Support grounded answer retrieval The system should provide retrieval packages suitable for grounded answers, summaries, and analysis. A grounded answer workflow receives supporting passages, citations, source IDs, metadata, and permission context.
FR-070 P1 Capture retrieval feedback The system should allow users, applications, or evaluation jobs to record useful, irrelevant, missing, or unsafe retrieval feedback. Feedback is stored with query context and can be used for quality analysis.
FR-071 P2 Support federated query patterns The system may support querying across external repositories without fully ingesting all content when connector policy allows. A query can combine engine-managed assets with connector-mediated external results while preserving source permissions.

4.5 Transformation, Composition, and Derived Artifacts

ID Priority Requirement Functional Behavior Acceptance Signal
FR-080 P0 Execute transformations The system shall execute configured transformations over one or more knowledge assets. A caller can request a transformation and receive a run ID, status, and result or structured error.
FR-081 P0 Compose outputs from multiple assets The system shall compose derived outputs from multiple source assets where configured. A report, summary, extract, view, bundle, or structured representation can be created from selected source assets.
FR-082 P0 Persist derived artifacts The system shall persist derived outputs as knowledge assets or artifact records with stable identity. A derived artifact can be retrieved, queried, governed, versioned, and related to its sources.
FR-083 P0 Record transformation lineage The system shall record source assets, source versions where available, operation type, parameters, actor, time, policy context, and output artifact for each transformation. A derived artifact can explain which sources and operation produced it.
FR-084 P0 Support parameterized transformations The system shall support transformation parameters such as output type, scope, template, model, extraction fields, target schema, and review policy where applicable. Transformation results include the parameters necessary to interpret or reproduce the operation within documented limits.
FR-085 P0 Enforce transformation permissions The system shall enforce access and policy checks before reading source assets, generating outputs, or storing derived artifacts. A caller cannot use transformation workflows to bypass retrieval, export, sensitivity, or lifecycle policies.
FR-086 P1 Support human review for transformations The system should support review, approval, correction, and rejection of derived artifacts before publication or downstream use. A transformation can produce a draft artifact that requires human decision before being marked approved.
FR-087 P1 Support controlled re-runs The system should allow transformations to be re-run against the same or newer source versions with explicit lineage. A re-run produces a new traceable run record and does not overwrite prior results without policy permission.
FR-088 P1 Compare derived artifacts The system should compare derived artifacts across source versions, transformation parameters, or review states. A caller can inspect differences between two summaries, reports, extracts, or generated representations.
FR-089 P2 Publish transformation outputs The system may publish approved derived artifacts to downstream systems through configured adapters. A derived artifact can be delivered to an external application while retaining lineage and publication audit.
FR-090 P2 Support reusable transformation templates The system may support configurable templates for recurring summaries, reports, extracts, and generated artifacts. A template can be versioned, invoked, audited, and reused across workflows.

4.6 Workflow and Job Orchestration

ID Priority Requirement Functional Behavior Acceptance Signal
FR-100 P0 Define workflow templates The system shall define reusable workflow or job templates containing steps, dependencies, inputs, outputs, policies, and failure behavior. A workflow template can be created and invoked through the API.
FR-101 P0 Execute workflows The system shall execute multi-step workflows over assets, collections, queries, source events, or submitted inputs. A workflow run can ingest, enrich, validate, transform, review, publish, synchronize, archive, or export knowledge according to the template.
FR-102 P0 Track workflow state The system shall expose workflow run state, step state, actor, timestamps, input references, output references, and error status. A caller can inspect queued, running, waiting, completed, failed, canceled, and retried states.
FR-103 P0 Respect step dependencies The system shall execute workflow steps according to declared dependencies and preconditions. A dependent step does not run until required prior steps succeed or enter an allowed alternate state.
FR-104 P0 Return workflow results The system shall return workflow outputs, generated artifacts, updated assets, validation results, and failure details. A completed workflow has observable outputs or an explicit no-output result.
FR-105 P0 Retry, resume, and cancel jobs The system shall support retry, resume, and cancellation behavior for workflows and jobs where operation semantics allow. A failed job can be retried from a safe state, resumed, or canceled with audit and visible outcome.
FR-106 P0 Audit workflow operations The system shall audit workflow template changes, run starts, step executions, retries, cancellations, approvals, failures, and outputs. A workflow run can be reconstructed from audit and run records.
FR-107 P1 Support event and schedule triggers The system should trigger workflows from source changes, API events, schedules, lifecycle transitions, review decisions, and external webhooks. A configured trigger starts the intended workflow and records trigger context.
FR-108 P1 Support human tasks The system should support human review, validation, approval, correction, rejection, and exception-handling tasks inside workflows. A workflow can pause for an assigned human decision and continue according to the result.
FR-109 P1 Maintain exception queues The system should expose failed, blocked, low-confidence, policy-conflicted, or review-required workflow items as actionable queues. Operators can list, inspect, assign, retry, approve, reject, or escalate exception items.
FR-110 P2 Support cross-system orchestration The system may orchestrate workflows involving external ECM, CMS, DMS, ERP, CRM, ITSM, HR, support, storage, or publishing systems. A workflow can call external systems through adapters while retaining engine-side state and audit.

4.7 Permissions, Governance, Audit, and Lifecycle

ID Priority Requirement Functional Behavior Acceptance Signal
FR-120 P0 Represent actors The system shall represent human users, applications, automation systems, service accounts, and AI agents as actors with explicit identity context. Every material operation can be associated with an actor or service principal.
FR-121 P0 Authorize operations The system shall authorize retrieval, mutation, transformation, workflow, export, and agent operations based on actor, role, group, asset policy, sensitivity, lifecycle state, and source policy where available. Unauthorized operations fail with structured authorization errors and do not leak protected content.
FR-122 P0 Enforce sensitivity and lifecycle constraints The system shall apply sensitivity, lifecycle, review, publication, retention, deletion, and archival constraints to relevant operations. A restricted asset cannot be transformed, exported, published, or deleted unless policy allows.
FR-123 P0 Preserve source permissions where available The system shall store and apply source-system permission references or effective access rules when supplied by connectors. Retrieval and derived operations respect source permissions or fail closed when required permission context is unavailable.
FR-124 P0 Audit material operations The system shall audit asset creation, ingestion, update, deletion, metadata change, relationship change, permission change, query, transformation, workflow action, export, and agent operation according to configured audit policy. Audit events include actor, operation, asset or job reference, timestamp, outcome, correlation ID, and policy context where available.
FR-125 P0 Query audit history The system shall allow authorized callers to query audit events by asset, actor, operation, workflow, time range, source, and outcome. An auditor can reconstruct who or what acted on an asset and when.
FR-126 P0 Fail closed on ambiguous access The system shall deny or withhold protected content when permission or policy state is missing, stale, or ambiguous according to configured safety rules. Ambiguous policy state produces an explicit error, hold, or redacted result rather than silent exposure.
FR-127 P1 Manage retention policies The system should apply configured retention policies to assets, metadata, versions, audit events, and derived artifacts. Assets subject to retention cannot be deleted before allowed disposition unless policy permits.
FR-128 P1 Support legal hold The system should place assets, versions, metadata, derived artifacts, and relevant audit history under legal or compliance hold. A held item cannot be altered or deleted in violation of the hold policy.
FR-129 P1 Support archival and defensible deletion The system should support archival, disposal review, deletion approval, and deletion evidence for governed assets. A deletion action produces traceable evidence or is blocked by retention, hold, or permission policy.
FR-130 P1 Synchronize permission changes The system should update effective access when source-system permissions, internal roles, group membership, or policy rules change. Permission changes propagate to retrieval, transformation, export, and agent access within documented latency.
FR-131 P1 Produce governance reports The system should generate reports for retention coverage, policy exceptions, legal holds, access anomalies, stale assets, and audit completeness. An authorized operator can export governance status for selected scopes.
FR-132 P2 Integrate with external policy and DLP systems The system may integrate with external identity, classification, data loss prevention, records, privacy, or compliance systems. External policy signals can influence access, transformation, export, and lifecycle decisions.

4.8 Versioning and Provenance

ID Priority Requirement Functional Behavior Acceptance Signal
FR-140 P1 Version asset content The system should track versions of asset content or source references when assets change. A caller can list versions and retrieve a selected version where policy permits.
FR-141 P1 Version metadata and relationships The system should track changes to metadata, classification, lifecycle state, and relationships. A caller can inspect how metadata or relationships changed over time.
FR-142 P1 Compare and restore versions The system should compare versions and restore a prior version subject to permission and lifecycle policy. A restore operation creates a new auditable change rather than erasing history.
FR-143 P0 Expose source provenance The system shall expose source provenance for ingested assets, including source reference and ingestion path where available. A user, application, workflow, or agent can determine the origin of an asset.
FR-144 P0 Expose derived-artifact lineage The system shall expose lineage for generated or transformed artifacts. A summary, extract, report, or generated representation can point back to source assets and transformation runs.
FR-145 P1 Support dependency impact analysis The system should identify derived artifacts, workflows, indexes, or downstream integrations that depend on a changed source asset. A source update can show which artifacts or workflows may need refresh or review.
FR-146 P2 Support provenance graph traversal The system may support graph-style traversal across sources, versions, transformations, workflows, reviews, and outputs. A caller can query multi-hop lineage and dependency paths.

4.9 Agent-Safe AI Interaction

ID Priority Requirement Functional Behavior Acceptance Signal
FR-160 P0 Register AI agents as explicit actors The system shall treat AI agents as explicit actors or delegated actors, not as implicit privileged internal processes. Agent operations include agent identity, delegated user or service context where applicable, and policy scope.
FR-161 P0 Expose a bounded operation catalog The system shall expose explicit agent-usable operations for inspection, retrieval, metadata enrichment, classification, transformation, workflow invocation, and review submission. An agent can only act through documented operations with declared inputs, outputs, and permissions.
FR-162 P0 Apply permissions to agent operations The system shall apply the same or stricter permission and policy checks to agent operations as to human, application, or automation operations. An agent cannot retrieve, infer, transform, export, or publish content beyond its authorized scope.
FR-163 P0 Provide context packages The system shall provide agents with bounded context packages containing selected assets, snippets, metadata, relationships, provenance, task instructions, and policy constraints. Agent context is explicit, source-grounded, and does not require unrestricted repository access.
FR-164 P0 Audit agent operations The system shall log agent reads, searches, transformations, metadata changes, workflow actions, generated artifacts, and review submissions. An auditor can distinguish agent actions from human and deterministic automation actions.
FR-165 P0 Require review gates where policy demands The system shall require human review or deny operations for destructive, sensitive, externally published, or high-impact agent actions when configured policy requires it. A sensitive agent operation enters a review state or fails with a policy error rather than executing automatically.
FR-166 P1 Support grounded AI answer workflows The system should support AI-assisted answers, summaries, and analyses that cite supporting assets and preserve source context. Generated answers include source references and can be audited for supporting evidence.
FR-167 P1 Remain provider neutral The system should support AI provider, embedding model, reranker, and prompt strategy substitution through configured adapters. Changing an AI provider does not require redefining core asset, permission, provenance, or workflow models.
FR-168 P1 Constrain agent tasks The system should support task scopes, budgets, time limits, allowed operation lists, and approval requirements for agent workflows. Agent execution stops or requests review when boundaries are reached.
FR-169 P2 Support multi-step agent workflows The system may support agent workflows that plan, execute, monitor, request review, recover from failures, and produce traceable artifacts. A multi-step agent task can be replayed or inspected from operation logs and workflow state.

4.10 API, Integration, and Extensibility

ID Priority Requirement Functional Behavior Acceptance Signal
FR-180 P0 Provide service APIs The system shall expose core capabilities through service APIs for assets, metadata, relationships, ingestion, retrieval, transformations, workflows, permissions, audit, and agent operations. Core operations can be performed without requiring a specific user interface or CLI.
FR-181 P0 Provide stable programmatic contracts The system shall define stable request, response, error, pagination, filtering, authentication, and authorization contracts for programmatic clients. External clients can integrate through documented contracts and receive predictable responses.
FR-182 P0 Accept external processing results The system shall accept results from external processors, such as extractors, classifiers, enrichment services, transformation services, or AI systems, through controlled interfaces. External results can be attached to assets as metadata, relationships, normalized representations, or derived artifacts with provenance.
FR-183 P1 Support source adapters The system should provide an adapter model for source repositories, file stores, document systems, databases, content platforms, and application systems. A source adapter can submit assets, source references, permission context, and update events through defined interfaces.
FR-184 P1 Emit events and webhooks The system should emit events for asset changes, ingestion completion, workflow status, policy exceptions, derived artifact creation, and review decisions. External systems can subscribe to engine events and react without polling every operation.
FR-185 P1 Support extensible schemas and plugins The system should allow custom metadata schemas, relationship types, workflow steps, transformations, validators, and policy checks to be added through extensions. An extension can add domain behavior without modifying core engine code.
FR-186 P1 Abstract implementation backends The system should abstract storage, index, queue, workflow, AI provider, and model backends where practical. A deployment can swap supported backends without changing externally visible asset semantics.
FR-187 P1 Version APIs The system should version APIs and avoid breaking existing integrations without documented migration paths. A client pinned to a supported API version continues to operate within the version support policy.
FR-188 P2 Support extension registry patterns The system may provide a registry for connectors, extractors, transformations, policy modules, and domain packages. Operators can discover, enable, disable, and inspect extensions from a managed registry.

4.11 Observability and Administration

ID Priority Requirement Functional Behavior Acceptance Signal
FR-200 P0 Expose job and ingestion status The system shall expose current and historical status for ingestion jobs, transformation runs, workflow runs, and exports. Operators can inspect state, duration, input, output, actor, and failure details.
FR-201 P0 Return correlation identifiers The system shall return correlation IDs or trace references for errors, jobs, workflows, and material operations. A reported error can be linked to system logs and audit records.
FR-202 P0 Support administrative recovery actions The system shall support authorized retry, re-run, re-index, cancel, quarantine, and repair actions where safe. An operator can recover from common ingestion, workflow, indexing, and transformation failures without directly modifying storage.
FR-203 P1 Expose operational metrics The system should expose metrics for ingestion throughput, query latency, API latency, workflow completion, job failure, queue age, reprocessing success, and storage/index health. Operators can monitor service health and compare implementation quality against target KPIs.
FR-204 P1 Expose retrieval quality signals The system should expose retrieval quality feedback, zero-result rate, low-confidence result rate, click or selection signals where available, and evaluation results. Product teams can identify poor retrieval behavior and measure improvement over time.
FR-205 P1 Expose AI operation and cost signals The system should expose model calls, token or compute usage where available, transformation cost, answer cost, agent task cost, and provider errors. Operators can attribute AI usage and cost to workflows, assets, agents, or applications.
FR-206 P1 Support governance inspection The system should allow authorized inspection of permission coverage, policy gaps, stale permissions, missing metadata, lifecycle exceptions, and audit completeness. Governance operators can identify assets that are under-classified, overexposed, stale, or policy-conflicted.
FR-207 P2 Support policy simulation The system may simulate the impact of permission, lifecycle, retention, and export policy changes before enforcement. An operator can preview affected assets, workflows, exports, and agent scopes before activating a policy change.

4.12 Export, Portability, and Migration

ID Priority Requirement Functional Behavior Acceptance Signal
FR-220 P1 Export asset packages The system should export assets, normalized representations, metadata, relationships, provenance, versions, audit references, and derived artifacts according to permission and policy. An export package contains enough information to inspect or migrate selected knowledge assets.
FR-221 P1 Export by scope The system should export by asset ID, collection, query, workflow run, source system, lifecycle state, date range, or governance policy. An authorized caller can export a governed subset without manual database access.
FR-222 P1 Include manifests and integrity data The system should include manifests, counts, checksums or hashes, schema versions, export time, actor, and policy context in export packages. An exported package can be validated for completeness and integrity.
FR-223 P1 Support re-import or migration validation The system should support validation of exported packages for re-import, migration, or downstream processing. An export can be checked before migration and produce a validation report.
FR-224 P2 Support long-term archival formats The system may support archival formats and preservation metadata for long-lived governed assets. An archive package preserves source, context, lifecycle, and provenance information for long-term use.
FR-225 P2 Produce migration reports The system may produce migration reports for completeness, skipped assets, unsupported fields, permission gaps, and relationship preservation. A migration run can be evaluated before decommissioning a source system.

4.13 Error Handling and Functional Correctness

ID Priority Requirement Functional Behavior Acceptance Signal
FR-240 P0 Return structured errors The system shall return structured errors for invalid input, unauthorized access, unsupported format, failed ingestion, policy conflict, validation failure, dependency failure, and internal failure. Clients receive machine-readable error code, message, correlation ID, operation, and remediation hint where available.
FR-241 P0 Avoid silent failures The system shall not silently ignore failures that affect persistence, identity, permissions, retrieval correctness, transformation outputs, workflow state, or auditability. Material failures produce visible job status, error records, audit records, or caller errors.
FR-242 P0 Validate inputs The system shall validate asset, metadata, query, transformation, workflow, permission, export, and agent-operation inputs before execution. Invalid input fails before partial state change unless the operation explicitly supports partial completion.
FR-243 P0 Report partial failures The system shall report partial failures in batch ingestion, transformation, workflow, query, and export operations. A batch operation reports succeeded, failed, skipped, quarantined, and retriable items separately.
FR-244 P1 Support idempotency The system should support idempotency keys or equivalent safeguards for create, ingest, transform, workflow, and export operations where duplicate execution would be harmful. A repeated request with the same idempotency context does not create unintended duplicate assets or jobs.
FR-245 P1 Support conflict detection The system should detect concurrent update conflicts for content, metadata, relationships, policies, and workflow state. A conflicting update returns a structured conflict response with the current version or resolution guidance.

5. Functional Constraints

The following constraints apply across all functional requirements:

  • The system must be API-first and must not require a specific user interface or CLI for core operation.
  • The system must remain format-agnostic and must not be constrained to one authoring or storage format.
  • The system must remain provider-neutral with respect to AI model provider, embedding model, search engine, workflow engine, storage backend, and deployment platform where practical.
  • The system must treat stable asset identity, source provenance, permissions, auditability, and transformation lineage as core functional concerns.
  • The system must not use transformations, workflows, exports, search snippets, or AI-generated answers to bypass access controls.
  • The system must distinguish source content, normalized representation, and derived artifacts.
  • The system must support both human and machine actors, including applications, automation systems, and AI agents.
  • The system must surface material failure states explicitly through structured errors, job status, audit events, or operator-visible diagnostics.

6. Core Capability KPIs

The following KPIs should be used to evaluate implementation quality and to compare the engine against relevant alternatives.

Capability Primary KPIs
Multi-source ingestion Connector coverage; ingestion success rate; source-update-to-index latency
Format normalization and extraction Extraction accuracy or F1; unsupported-format rate; processing cost per asset
Persistent asset identity Duplicate-detection rate; identity collision rate; percentage of assets with stable IDs
Metadata and classification Metadata completeness; classification accuracy; manual correction rate
Context modeling and relationships Relationship coverage; graph/query completeness; average context depth per asset
Search and retrieval Precision@k or NDCG; p95 query latency; zero-result rate
Grounded AI answers and RAG Grounded-answer accuracy; citation precision; unsupported-claim rate
Permissions and access control Permission fidelity; access violation rate; policy propagation latency
Governance and lifecycle management Retention-policy coverage; audit response time; legal-hold completeness
Versioning and provenance Provenance completeness; version recovery success; change traceability coverage
Workflow orchestration Workflow completion rate; manual-touch reduction; exception backlog
Intelligent document processing Field extraction F1; straight-through processing rate; human validation time
API-first access API uptime; p95 API latency; developer time to first integration
Extensibility and integration Extension deployment time; integration count; breaking-change frequency
Collaboration and review Review turnaround time; active contributor rate; correction acceptance rate
Agent-safe operation Agent task success rate; human-intervention rate; policy-violation rate
Observability and administration Mean time to detect or resolve failures; job failure rate; cost per indexed or answered item
Scalability and performance Indexing throughput; p95/p99 latency; maximum tested corpus size
Data portability and lock-in control Export completeness; migration success rate; proprietary-dependency count
User and developer experience Time to complete common task; adoption rate; developer satisfaction

7. MVP Functional Compliance

A system can be considered compliant with the MVP interpretation of this FRS when the following P0 behavior is demonstrably implemented:

  1. Assets can be created, assigned stable IDs, retrieved, updated, grouped, retired, and governed through APIs.
  2. Baseline heterogeneous formats can be ingested and normalized into a common representation.
  3. Source provenance is preserved for ingested assets.
  4. Metadata, classification, contextual entities, and relationships can be created, queried, and updated.
  5. Search and filtered retrieval work across content, metadata, lifecycle state, source context, and relationships.
  6. Retrieval respects permissions and policy constraints.
  7. Transformations produce traceable derived artifacts with source lineage.
  8. Workflows can be executed, tracked, retried, canceled, and audited.
  9. Material operations produce audit events.
  10. Human, application, automation, and AI-agent actors are represented explicitly.
  11. AI agents can only act through bounded, permissioned, auditable operations.
  12. Structured errors and partial-failure reports are available for invalid or failed operations.
  13. Operators can inspect job state and perform basic recovery actions.

8. Traceability

8.1 PRD-to-FRS Coverage

PRD Concept FRS Coverage
Stable knowledge asset identity FR-001FR-010
Ingestion and normalization FR-020FR-030
Metadata, classification, and contextualization FR-040FR-050
Search, query, and retrieval FR-060FR-071
Traceable transformation and derived artifacts FR-080FR-090
Workflow and job orchestration FR-100FR-110
Permissions, governance, audit, and lifecycle FR-120FR-132
Versioning and provenance FR-140FR-146
Agent-safe operation FR-160FR-169
API-first access, integration, and extensibility FR-180FR-188
Observability and administration FR-200FR-207
Export, portability, and migration FR-220FR-225
Structured error handling and correctness FR-240FR-245

8.2 Corporate Use-Case Coverage

Corporate Use Case Most Relevant FRS Areas
Enterprise AI knowledge access and grounded assistants Retrieval, context modeling, permissions, provenance, grounded AI workflows, agent-safe operation
Document-centric process automation Ingestion, extraction, transformation, workflow, human review, audit, lifecycle
Governance, records, compliance, and audit readiness Permissions, governance, lifecycle, audit, versioning, export, reporting
Secure content collaboration and file-service modernization Asset identity, metadata, relationships, permissions, source references, retrieval
Legal and professional-services knowledge work Contextual entities, strict permissions, provenance, relationship modeling, review, audit
Customer service and support knowledge Search, classification, freshness/lifecycle state, review, grounded answers, feedback
Digital content supply chain and omnichannel publishing Transformation, derived artifacts, workflow, approval, publishing adapters, export
Enterprise application content services API-first access, adapters, contextual entities, relationships, workflows, events
R&D, engineering, technical, and project knowledge reuse Context modeling, relationship retrieval, provenance, semantic retrieval, dependency analysis
Digital asset and rich-media operations Media-derived representations, metadata, rights, renditions, rich-media retrieval
Corporate intranet, policy, onboarding, and team knowledge base Search, metadata, lifecycle, review, publishing consumers, application APIs
Custom knowledge-backed applications APIs, schemas, extensibility, export, provider neutrality, workflow services

9. Acceptance Perspective

The system satisfies this FRS when:

  • P0 requirements are implemented and verified through repeatable functional tests.
  • Each material operation has explicit input, output, error, permission, and audit behavior.
  • Assets retain stable identity across common lifecycle changes.
  • Ingestion and normalization produce retrievable, contextualized, traceable assets.
  • Search, retrieval, transformation, workflow, export, and agent operations enforce permissions consistently.
  • Derived artifacts can be traced back to source assets and operation context.
  • Workflows expose observable state, outputs, failures, retries, and audit trails.
  • AI agents can operate only through explicit, bounded, reviewable, and auditable interfaces.
  • Operators can inspect status, diagnose failures, and recover common operational issues.
  • The system can be evaluated against the capability KPIs in this document.

10. Requirement Index

ID Priority Title Section
FR-001 P0 Create knowledge assets 1 Knowledge Asset Registry and Persistence
FR-002 P0 Assign stable asset identity 1 Knowledge Asset Registry and Persistence
FR-003 P0 Persist asset state 1 Knowledge Asset Registry and Persistence
FR-004 P0 Retrieve assets by identifier 1 Knowledge Asset Registry and Persistence
FR-005 P0 Update asset content and metadata 1 Knowledge Asset Registry and Persistence
FR-006 P0 Retire or delete assets under policy 1 Knowledge Asset Registry and Persistence
FR-007 P0 Group assets into collections 1 Knowledge Asset Registry and Persistence
FR-008 P0 Represent original and normalized forms 1 Knowledge Asset Registry and Persistence
FR-009 P1 Detect duplicate or repeated ingestion 1 Knowledge Asset Registry and Persistence
FR-010 P1 Support aliases and supersession 1 Knowledge Asset Registry and Persistence
FR-020 P0 Submit ingestion jobs 2 Ingestion and Normalization
FR-021 P0 Ingest baseline heterogeneous formats 2 Ingestion and Normalization
FR-022 P0 Record ingestion provenance 2 Ingestion and Normalization
FR-023 P0 Normalize content 2 Ingestion and Normalization
FR-024 P0 Extract structural elements 2 Ingestion and Normalization
FR-025 P0 Expose ingestion status and failures 2 Ingestion and Normalization
FR-026 P1 Support incremental re-ingestion 2 Ingestion and Normalization
FR-027 P1 Support pluggable extractors and connectors 2 Ingestion and Normalization
FR-028 P1 Validate ingestion output 2 Ingestion and Normalization
FR-029 P2 Support advanced OCR and layout extraction 2 Ingestion and Normalization
FR-030 P2 Support media-derived representations 2 Ingestion and Normalization
FR-040 P0 Manage explicit metadata 3 Metadata, Classification, and Context Modeling
FR-041 P0 Support standard metadata fields 3 Metadata, Classification, and Context Modeling
FR-042 P0 Support custom metadata schemas 3 Metadata, Classification, and Context Modeling
FR-043 P0 Assign classifications 3 Metadata, Classification, and Context Modeling
FR-044 P0 Define relationships between assets 3 Metadata, Classification, and Context Modeling
FR-045 P0 Represent contextual entities 3 Metadata, Classification, and Context Modeling
FR-046 P0 Query context 3 Metadata, Classification, and Context Modeling
FR-047 P1 Maintain relationship semantics 3 Metadata, Classification, and Context Modeling
FR-048 P1 Support inferred metadata review 3 Metadata, Classification, and Context Modeling
FR-049 P1 Validate metadata against schemas 3 Metadata, Classification, and Context Modeling
FR-050 P2 Support domain-specific context packages 3 Metadata, Classification, and Context Modeling
FR-060 P0 Retrieve by asset ID 4 Search, Query, and Retrieval
FR-061 P0 Search by text 4 Search, Query, and Retrieval
FR-062 P0 Filter by metadata and lifecycle state 4 Search, Query, and Retrieval
FR-063 P0 Retrieve by relationship and context 4 Search, Query, and Retrieval
FR-064 P0 Return source-grounded result data 4 Search, Query, and Retrieval
FR-065 P0 Enforce permission-aware retrieval 4 Search, Query, and Retrieval
FR-066 P0 Support stable pagination and sorting 4 Search, Query, and Retrieval
FR-067 P1 Support facets and aggregations 4 Search, Query, and Retrieval
FR-068 P1 Support semantic retrieval 4 Search, Query, and Retrieval
FR-069 P1 Support grounded answer retrieval 4 Search, Query, and Retrieval
FR-070 P1 Capture retrieval feedback 4 Search, Query, and Retrieval
FR-071 P2 Support federated query patterns 4 Search, Query, and Retrieval
FR-080 P0 Execute transformations 5 Transformation, Composition, and Derived Artifacts
FR-081 P0 Compose outputs from multiple assets 5 Transformation, Composition, and Derived Artifacts
FR-082 P0 Persist derived artifacts 5 Transformation, Composition, and Derived Artifacts
FR-083 P0 Record transformation lineage 5 Transformation, Composition, and Derived Artifacts
FR-084 P0 Support parameterized transformations 5 Transformation, Composition, and Derived Artifacts
FR-085 P0 Enforce transformation permissions 5 Transformation, Composition, and Derived Artifacts
FR-086 P1 Support human review for transformations 5 Transformation, Composition, and Derived Artifacts
FR-087 P1 Support controlled re-runs 5 Transformation, Composition, and Derived Artifacts
FR-088 P1 Compare derived artifacts 5 Transformation, Composition, and Derived Artifacts
FR-089 P2 Publish transformation outputs 5 Transformation, Composition, and Derived Artifacts
FR-090 P2 Support reusable transformation templates 5 Transformation, Composition, and Derived Artifacts
FR-100 P0 Define workflow templates 6 Workflow and Job Orchestration
FR-101 P0 Execute workflows 6 Workflow and Job Orchestration
FR-102 P0 Track workflow state 6 Workflow and Job Orchestration
FR-103 P0 Respect step dependencies 6 Workflow and Job Orchestration
FR-104 P0 Return workflow results 6 Workflow and Job Orchestration
FR-105 P0 Retry, resume, and cancel jobs 6 Workflow and Job Orchestration
FR-106 P0 Audit workflow operations 6 Workflow and Job Orchestration
FR-107 P1 Support event and schedule triggers 6 Workflow and Job Orchestration
FR-108 P1 Support human tasks 6 Workflow and Job Orchestration
FR-109 P1 Maintain exception queues 6 Workflow and Job Orchestration
FR-110 P2 Support cross-system orchestration 6 Workflow and Job Orchestration
FR-120 P0 Represent actors 7 Permissions, Governance, Audit, and Lifecycle
FR-121 P0 Authorize operations 7 Permissions, Governance, Audit, and Lifecycle
FR-122 P0 Enforce sensitivity and lifecycle constraints 7 Permissions, Governance, Audit, and Lifecycle
FR-123 P0 Preserve source permissions where available 7 Permissions, Governance, Audit, and Lifecycle
FR-124 P0 Audit material operations 7 Permissions, Governance, Audit, and Lifecycle
FR-125 P0 Query audit history 7 Permissions, Governance, Audit, and Lifecycle
FR-126 P0 Fail closed on ambiguous access 7 Permissions, Governance, Audit, and Lifecycle
FR-127 P1 Manage retention policies 7 Permissions, Governance, Audit, and Lifecycle
FR-128 P1 Support legal hold 7 Permissions, Governance, Audit, and Lifecycle
FR-129 P1 Support archival and defensible deletion 7 Permissions, Governance, Audit, and Lifecycle
FR-130 P1 Synchronize permission changes 7 Permissions, Governance, Audit, and Lifecycle
FR-131 P1 Produce governance reports 7 Permissions, Governance, Audit, and Lifecycle
FR-132 P2 Integrate with external policy and DLP systems 7 Permissions, Governance, Audit, and Lifecycle
FR-140 P1 Version asset content 8 Versioning and Provenance
FR-141 P1 Version metadata and relationships 8 Versioning and Provenance
FR-142 P1 Compare and restore versions 8 Versioning and Provenance
FR-143 P0 Expose source provenance 8 Versioning and Provenance
FR-144 P0 Expose derived-artifact lineage 8 Versioning and Provenance
FR-145 P1 Support dependency impact analysis 8 Versioning and Provenance
FR-146 P2 Support provenance graph traversal 8 Versioning and Provenance
FR-160 P0 Register AI agents as explicit actors 9 Agent-Safe AI Interaction
FR-161 P0 Expose a bounded operation catalog 9 Agent-Safe AI Interaction
FR-162 P0 Apply permissions to agent operations 9 Agent-Safe AI Interaction
FR-163 P0 Provide context packages 9 Agent-Safe AI Interaction
FR-164 P0 Audit agent operations 9 Agent-Safe AI Interaction
FR-165 P0 Require review gates where policy demands 9 Agent-Safe AI Interaction
FR-166 P1 Support grounded AI answer workflows 9 Agent-Safe AI Interaction
FR-167 P1 Remain provider neutral 9 Agent-Safe AI Interaction
FR-168 P1 Constrain agent tasks 9 Agent-Safe AI Interaction
FR-169 P2 Support multi-step agent workflows 9 Agent-Safe AI Interaction
FR-180 P0 Provide service APIs 10 API, Integration, and Extensibility
FR-181 P0 Provide stable programmatic contracts 10 API, Integration, and Extensibility
FR-182 P0 Accept external processing results 10 API, Integration, and Extensibility
FR-183 P1 Support source adapters 10 API, Integration, and Extensibility
FR-184 P1 Emit events and webhooks 10 API, Integration, and Extensibility
FR-185 P1 Support extensible schemas and plugins 10 API, Integration, and Extensibility
FR-186 P1 Abstract implementation backends 10 API, Integration, and Extensibility
FR-187 P1 Version APIs 10 API, Integration, and Extensibility
FR-188 P2 Support extension registry patterns 10 API, Integration, and Extensibility
FR-200 P0 Expose job and ingestion status 11 Observability and Administration
FR-201 P0 Return correlation identifiers 11 Observability and Administration
FR-202 P0 Support administrative recovery actions 11 Observability and Administration
FR-203 P1 Expose operational metrics 11 Observability and Administration
FR-204 P1 Expose retrieval quality signals 11 Observability and Administration
FR-205 P1 Expose AI operation and cost signals 11 Observability and Administration
FR-206 P1 Support governance inspection 11 Observability and Administration
FR-207 P2 Support policy simulation 11 Observability and Administration
FR-220 P1 Export asset packages 12 Export, Portability, and Migration
FR-221 P1 Export by scope 12 Export, Portability, and Migration
FR-222 P1 Include manifests and integrity data 12 Export, Portability, and Migration
FR-223 P1 Support re-import or migration validation 12 Export, Portability, and Migration
FR-224 P2 Support long-term archival formats 12 Export, Portability, and Migration
FR-225 P2 Produce migration reports 12 Export, Portability, and Migration
FR-240 P0 Return structured errors 13 Error Handling and Functional Correctness
FR-241 P0 Avoid silent failures 13 Error Handling and Functional Correctness
FR-242 P0 Validate inputs 13 Error Handling and Functional Correctness
FR-243 P0 Report partial failures 13 Error Handling and Functional Correctness
FR-244 P1 Support idempotency 13 Error Handling and Functional Correctness
FR-245 P1 Support conflict detection 13 Error Handling and Functional Correctness

11. Open Functional Decisions

The following decisions should be resolved during architecture and implementation planning:

  • Asset identity strategy: UUID, content fingerprint, source-derived ID, hybrid identity, or pluggable resolver.
  • Source-of-truth strategy for permissions: engine-owned, source-synchronized, delegated, or hybrid.
  • Minimum baseline format set for MVP and required extraction depth per format.
  • Versioning model for content, metadata, relationships, derived artifacts, and workflow state.
  • Workflow execution model: embedded engine, external orchestrator, or adapter-based hybrid.
  • Search architecture: lexical only for MVP, semantic retrieval in V1, or combined retrieval from the start.
  • Provenance storage model: relational, event-sourced, graph-backed, or hybrid.
  • Export package format and schema versioning policy.
  • Extension boundary for source connectors, transformation modules, policy modules, and AI/model adapters.
  • Human review model: built-in review primitives only, external task system integration, or both.

12. Stability Note

Changes to this FRS should be treated as deliberate changes to externally observable product behavior. Implementation details may change independently, but requirements related to identity, provenance, permission enforcement, auditability, traceable transformation, and agent-safe operation should remain stable unless the product scope is intentionally revised.