Using this specification as a partner

This site exposes the Sovereignty Node Manifest as a self-contained specification that you can read without direct access to the source repository. It is aimed at defence primes, government programme staff, safety and legal authorities, and academic partners who need to understand how a per-node mission contract is structured.

If you are coming from a C2 or autonomy background, the key idea is that the Node Manifest is the smallest portable contract between a commander and a single node for a bounded time window. It declares which schema version it follows, which node it binds to, when it is intended to be in force, which tenants it serves, what mission slice it represents in time and space, and which policy bundles and runtime profile it assumes.

The recommended reading order is straightforward. Start with the Overview, Design Principles, and Glossary to understand the concepts and vocabulary. Then read the Envelope, Tenancy, Mission, and Profile and Contracts specifications under the Specification section. Those documents are normative for the 0.2.0 schema line. Once you are comfortable with the fields, look at the MQ-9B scenarios to see how the same manifest structure applies to realistic Arctic patrol sorties. Finally, consult the Examples page if you want to see the concrete JSON documents that match those scenarios.

If you are evaluating integration work, the JSON Schema under schema/ and the TypeScript bindings under src/ are the normative machine interfaces. The manifest selection helper described in the envelope specification shows exactly how a runtime should decide which manifest is in force at a given instant on a node. This site does not attempt to document internal runtime implementation; it focuses on the on-wire contract.

If you are a regulator, safety authority, or legal advisor, the most relevant pieces are the explicit validity windows, mission windows, and tenancy declarations, and the way manifests reference hashed policy bundles in the profile and contracts block. Those fields are the anchors for receipts-driven evidence in the wider mission fabric. Later schema lines will extend this model, but the core envelope, tenancy, mission, and contracts concepts will remain.

You do not need to touch the existing docs/index.md, docs/design-principles.md, or docs/glossary.md for this work package; the new navigation and pages are enough to make the site coherent for an external reader.