Concepts

SPOKE defines its vocabulary in wire terms — every concept below is a concrete JSON shape or open-string vocabulary on the protocol surface. This page is the key-statement tour: what the nine layers are, what capability flags claim, and which pairs the protocol keeps deliberately separate. Field-level detail lives on the Reference pages.

The nine layers (L0–L8)

Layer	What it carries
L0 Envelope	Identity + schema_version on all durable objects
L1 Ontology	Open entry_type strings + Domain Profiles
L2 Body	Closed body: summary, tags, scalar attributes (optional state / computable under l2-computable)
L3 Provenance	SourceAnchor pointers
L4 Graph	Typed directed Relations (with optional revision OCC)
L5 Temporal	TimelineEvent when-axis + projection tiers brief / narrative / moment (optional Fork under l5-fork; optional MindState mental-state records under l5-mind)
L6 Constraint	Rule declarative input to check
L7 Finding	Checker output + status lifecycle
L8 Context	AssemblePacket wire shape (assembly itself stays product-local)

Capability levels

A product claims compliance at a declared capability level. spoke-baseline covers L0–L8 semantics via the five ops wire families, HostCapabilityManifest + baseline HostManifestPort, and the shared Scope / error-envelope definitions. Optional flags are additive — baseline compliance stands alone:

• l2-computable — computable knowledge state and its history, with the project / compute ops.
• l5-fork — world-history branch metadata on the timeline.
• l5-mind — MindState, the strictly derivative temporal mental-state record over the when-axis — see the MindState reference.
• narrative-modules — the optional modules bag for cross-product functional dialects.
• ke-extraction — the optional extract op: referenced source material in, provisional KnowledgeEntry candidates out.
• ke-ownership — ownership and disclosure on the KnowledgeEntry envelope, with the Scope.viewpoint reader selector.
• spoke-connect — the opt-in cross-process interaction envelope family.

The connect family's session lifecycle, envelope authentication, and capability routing are explained in Connect architecture.

Dual-concern pairs

The protocol keeps three pairs deliberately separate:

• An ontology entry_type: "event" label on a KnowledgeEntry versus the L5 TimelineEvent when-axis object — one local concept may map to one or both wire shapes.
• An ontology entry_type: "rule" label versus the L6 Rule checker input — Rule is declarative input, Finding is checker output.
• An ontology entry_type: "character" / profile mind label versus the L5 MindState temporal record — the label classifies a knowledge node; MindState is the strictly derivative snapshot / delta of the holder's mental fields (modules.mental / modules.belief are the settled home).

The names stay separate so check / assemble selectors remain unambiguous.

Open vocabulary and Domain Profiles

Core objects keep closed envelopes (additionalProperties: false), while core vocabulary stays open: entry_type, relation_type, and statuses are open strings with documented core lists, not closed enums. A Domain Profile publishes ontology vocabulary over those open strings — beat mapping, lore activation, knowledge packs — and products express profile-specific types with open strings and extensions.<namespace>. See Domain profiles.

Selectors and extension points

• Scope — the shared ops selector for check / assemble: required opaque scope_id plus optional refinements (entry_ids, entry_types, timeline_scale, fork_id, viewpoint, …); viewpoint is the ke-ownership reader selector.
• Extensions — extensions.<namespace> product bag on every durable object; adapters round-trip unknown namespaces verbatim.
• Modules — the optional modules.* bag (capability-flagged narrative-modules) for cross-product functional dialects on KnowledgeEntry, AssemblePacket, and TimelineEvent.

Pure-library posture

The operations library is a pure behavior layer over the generated wire types: lifecycle helpers, capability-sliced adapter ports, and injection orchestration — no I/O of its own. Storage access, LLM calls, ranking, retrieval, and transport binding are supplied by products through injected ports; the reference adapters in fixtures/toy-world/ demonstrate the pattern.

Related

• Protocol reference — schema inventory, extensions contract, capability flags.
• Data model reference — field tables per layer.
• Domain profiles — the published open-string vocabularies.
• MindState reference — the L5 temporal mental-state record (l5-mind).