Aura/docs/design/contracts/c29-self-description.md

C29 — Self-description: every surface explains itself

Guarantee. Every closed-vocabulary entry the binary exposes carries a one-line meaning, enforced at the seam where the entry enters the system; everything entering the content-addressed store describes itself; a refusal for a missing description names the entry, the field, and the rule. One shared deterministic gate — doc_gate in aura-core, importable by every seam per C28; it fails on an empty/whitespace doc and on a doc that normalizes to the entry's own name — the full id or its bare display segment after the last ::, so a namespaced extension entry cannot pass its short-name alibi (DocGateFault::{Empty, RestatesName}) — guards three seams:

1. Compile/unit seam (engine-shipped). NodeSchema.doc is a required field, so the compiler enumerates every construction site; metrics and tap slots are schema carriers (MetricSchema / TapSchema, id + doc); blocks (BlockSchema.doc, the pre-existing model) and tap folds (the registry roster, C27) already carried theirs. The coverage walk (aura-cli/tests/self_description.rs) asserts the gate over all five vocabularies — the engine satisfies its own law.
2. Load seam (extension). load_crate walks every charter-checked type id and gates the resolved schema's doc; a fault refuses the load naming type and rule (ProjectError::UndescribedVocabularyEntry). Field presence is compile-enforced for any crate built against the new core; the load gate catches the shape violations the compiler cannot see across the cdylib boundary — the empty-string alibi and the name restatement.
3. Register seam (data plane). The registry's public put_blueprint parses the canonical bytes and requires a gate-passing doc on the root composite and on every nested composite (the walk recurses unconditionally — it does not stop at an unnamed one) — the gate guards the store boundary itself, so the register verb, every register-then-run sugar path, and any future caller are gated by construction. The op-script vocabulary carries the doc op as the builder .doc(...)'s twin (C25: a closed, typed metadata construct). Process/campaign documents take an additive-optional top-level description, gated only when present (DocFault::BadDescription).
4. Use seam (data plane, construction-time, #317). The use construction op re-runs the SAME gate_composite_docs walk over a blueprint FETCHED from the store, before it ever splices into a new composition — a build-time gate on already-registered content, not a second write-path check. A doc-less entry (reachable only through the raw in-crate write survivor class, since put_blueprint's own gate keeps the store clean going forward) cannot enter a NEW composition this way, but stays readable and runnable on its own — no retroactive invalidation, the same discipline the Forbids clause states for the register seam.

Scope at this record's writing (#321). The gate walks five vocabularies — process/campaign blocks, metrics, tap slots, tap folds, and the closed node roster — plus the document description and the three seams above. Recorded residue, tracked as #321 and not silently claimed: emit_vocabulary() and binding_column_vocabulary() remain bare name arrays, and builder schemas outside the closed node roster (e.g. the internal tap recording sink) carry compile-required but shape-unwalked docs. Closing #321 widens the walk and removes this paragraph.

Id treatment. Description fields that serialize participate in the content id and are blanked for the identity id, exactly as Composite.doc (strip_debug_symbols); NodeSchema is not serialized (C24), so node docs move no id. Documents have no identity projection — their pair is: absent description is byte-identical to the field-less form (existing content ids stable), present participates.

Forbids. The engine evaluating description text — the gate is deterministic string shape, never content judgement (no freetext logic hole; C17 / domain invariant 10 untouched). A description influencing execution, identity ids, or determinism (C1). Retroactive invalidation of already-registered artifacts — the gate guards the write path only (the raw in-crate write survives as the store-mechanics and back-compat witness: pre-C29 doc-less entries stay readable). Machine-invented meaning lines — an authored text is corrected against the source, never weakened to an empty string or a name restatement.

Why. The audience is headless LLM agents and scripts (#319 ruling), for whom the binary is the only always-present teacher. Field evidence 2026-07-22 (#314): an agent holding only the release binary had to recover execution semantics and document schemas by CAS forensics — the removed failure class is exactly that forensic recovery.

Rendering of the carried texts on the help/introspection surfaces shipped with #315; the agent bootstrap card was retired as superseded (#267 — the C29 surfaces themselves carry it); the fold introspection surface shipped with #310 and renders the fold-registry roster — labels exactly as the --tap selector accepts them, doc lines from the registry entries (#332).