Fossil Project Pack

This pack holds the Fossil-specific inputs for the RFC workflow. It assumes the neutral contract, controller rules, reviewer roles, and toolchain mechanics live in the repo-wide core/, briefs/, prompts/, and toolchains/ surfaces.

Suite covered

The Fossil pack targets a four-document suite:

1. Artifact Format — the foundational content-addressed artifact model.
2. Delta Format — the byte-level delta encoding used by Fossil content transfer and storage.
3. Repository State and Check-in Resolution — the derived branch, tag, leaf, and current-trunk semantics computed over stored artifacts.
4. Sync Protocol — the HTTP-based artifact exchange protocol that depends on Artifact, Delta, and RepoState.

Fossil suite contract

• A competent programmer who has never seen the Fossil source should be able to build a conformant, interoperable implementation from these four documents alone.
• The Artifact document is foundational. The Delta document defines the byte-level delta format. The RepoState document specifies derived repository views over stored artifacts. The Sync document depends on all three companion documents rather than carrying those semantics inline.
• RepoState was added later in the drafting effort when it became clear that repository-derived behavior — check-in resolution, branch/tag state, leaves, and current-trunk — needed its own companion RFC for clean-room implementability.
• Artifact and Delta must preserve every construct required to read existing repositories, including historical SHA-1 content and documented card-ordering relaxations.
• Sync scope is the current wire version: keep the cfile clone path and clone_seqno; omit the older version-2 send_file clone path and pre-2.27 login handling.
• Final public deliverables are the source Kramdown draft and the rendered IETF text draft. XML is an intermediate build artifact, not a published deliverable, and rendered-output runs require the repo-wide kramdown/xml2rfc mechanics to be available before execution.
• Provenance containment is suite-specific: the only permitted transformation/ratification statement is the mandated opening sentence in the Artifact abstract. Human author blocks stay human-only.

Pack contents

• suite-brief.md — suite charter, deliverable boundaries, and cross-document rules.
• corpus-brief.md — Fossil-specific source authority, corpus boundaries, and section-to-source routing.
• draft-metadata.md — shared front-matter defaults and per-document title/abstract defaults.
• references.md — authoritative suite reference pool, internal dependency map, and terminology ownership.
• references/ — staged Fossil-specific source-reference support material such as path maps, excerpt sets, or operator notes gathered for a run.
• briefs/artifact.md — Artifact RFC scope, required sections, and edge cases.
• briefs/delta.md — Delta RFC scope, required sections, and edge cases.
• briefs/repo-state.md — RepoState RFC scope, required sections, and derived-state edge cases.
• briefs/sync.md — Sync RFC scope, required sections, and edge cases.
• examples/anomaly-seeds.md — known review seeds and anomaly probes that must be re-checked against source or observed bytes.
• runs/README.md — checked-in run-root guidance for Fossil executions; concrete run artifacts belong under runs/<run-id>/.

Pack versus run boundary

The reusable Fossil inputs stay at the top of projects/fossil/: suite charter, corpus boundary, references, metadata, document briefs, staged support notes, and review seeds.

Concrete run output belongs only under projects/fossil/runs/<run-id>/, using the standard public/, evidence/, gates/, and optional logs/ layout described in runs/README.md.

Recommended use

1. Load the neutral workflow contract and core docs.
2. Load this project pack's suite-brief.md, corpus-brief.md, draft-metadata.md, and authoritative references.md.
3. Stage or consult supporting Fossil-specific source-reference material under references/ when a run needs local path maps, excerpt bundles, or other non-authoritative aids.
4. Load exactly one per-document brief for the draft being worked.
5. Use examples/anomaly-seeds.md during source scouting, example capture, and clean-room review.
6. If you keep repo-local run artifacts inside this pack, create them only under runs/<run-id>/ and keep runs/README.md as the checked-in placeholder.
7. Keep reusable render/build mechanics in toolchains/; keep Fossil corpus and drafting constraints here.

Intentionally not in this pack

These Fossil files do not carry neutral workflow policy:

• controller-stage ordering,
• claim-ledger / packaging / validation framework rules,
• harness adapter commands,
• local tool installation instructions,
• environment-specific shell recipes.

Those belong in repo-wide core or toolchain surfaces, not in the Fossil pack.