Identity Core

The RIGOR identity is defined by its commitment to structural boundedness, determinism, and formal precision.

Core Principles

Explicitness

All transitions must be declared. No implicit behavior is permitted.

Determinism

Given state, event, and version, the resulting transition must be singular or explicitly rejected.

Classified Evolution

All structural changes must be typed as compatible, conditional, or breaking. Silent evolution is invalid.

Typed Context & Static Validation

RIGOR processes operate over an explicitly declared and statically validated context schema. Every process must declare a structured context schema, explicit property types, and required fields.

No implicit fields are permitted. All context mutations must conform to the declared schema. Type violations must be detected at validation time, not runtime.

This ensures:

• Deterministic behavior
• Compile-time structural validation
• Elimination of ambiguous state mutation

RIGOR specifications are structurally verifiable before execution.

Event-Driven Mutation Model

RIGOR enforces a strict event-driven mutation model. Context may only mutate inside explicitly declared transitions, triggered by declared events, and according to permitted mutation rules.

No state change is allowed outside a transition, inside arbitrary execution blocks, or through implicit side effects. All state evolution must be observable, explicit, and declared.

This guarantees:

• Full traceability
• Predictable state evolution
• Elimination of hidden mutations

Transactional Event Semantics

Each processed event constitutes a single transactional unit. For every event:

1. The current state is read
2. A matching transition is evaluated
3. Guard conditions are checked
4. Context mutation is applied
5. State transition occurs
6. Changes are committed atomically

If any step fails, the transition is aborted and no mutation is persisted. This ensures strong consistency, atomic transitions, and deterministic replay capability.

Specification vs Implementation

RIGOR is a specification, not an engine. The protocol defines structural rules, mutation constraints, event semantics, and versioning guarantees. It does not mandate a specific runtime, storage engine, or programming language.

Any engine that conforms to the formal specification, passes validation requirements, and preserves semantic guarantees may be considered RIGOR-compliant. An official reference engine may exist, but it does not define the protocol.

Versioning & Core Freeze

RIGOR Core v0.1 defines the foundational semantic guarantees of the protocol. The Core semantic model is considered frozen.

Future evolution must:

• preserve backward compatibility where declared
• Explicitly classify changes (compatible, conditionally compatible, breaking)
• Maintain deterministic semantics

Specification versions follow semantic versioning principles. The identity of RIGOR is stable by design.

Protocol Positioning

RIGOR operates upstream of execution. It does not orchestrate. It does not execute. It constrains structural possibility.

RIGOR defines strict semantic guarantees that downstream implementations must preserve. The protocol is not an orchestration engine. It is a deterministic specification language for describing stateful processes. Execution engines interpret RIGOR specifications — they do not redefine them.

Narrative System

The RIGOR narrative is:

• Declarative
• Precise
• Structural
• Non-emotional
• Non-promotional

RIGOR does not persuade. RIGOR defines.