Where this stands
ESS is experimental and standalone.
Latest published release observed on 10 September 2026:
0.22.1. Its release record lists archives
for Linux and macOS on x86-64 and ARM64, plus SHA256SUMS. This is a dated asset-list observation;
it does not claim that the archives were downloaded, their checksums verified, or the binary
installed or executed. The release repairs the release gate and retains the at_most_once
bindings introduced in 0.22.0.
The dated conformance observations below remain scoped to their original release and execution.
Current source capabilities
- validation and canonical compilation of typed system specifications;
- name resolution, reusable shapes, entity relations, total handle lookup, inspection, graphing, semantic diff, and impact analysis;
- outcome-to-entity assignments and parameterized views that make generated scenarios assert the values written by commands;
- repository Markdown documentation, HTML sites, JSON Schema, OpenAPI, and AsyncAPI generation;
- offline validation and deterministic TypeScript projection for adopter-owned JSON Schema registries;
- structural Rust, Go, browser, and Clap synthesis with explicit obligations;
- semantic conformance-suite generation, component-scoped suites, and reference execution;
- standalone conformance reports from the Rust and generated Go runners;
- component descriptors and deterministic build, runtime, release, stack, and deployment models;
- canonical build IR that round-trips through release verification, digest-pinned OCI release bundles, and affected-only Helm reconciliation behind explicit executor commands;
- generated Services, stateful workloads, persistent-volume claims and mounts, with schema-valid configuration-neutral Helm defaults;
- OpenAPI import and projection for the declared service/interface subset;
- sanitized Kubernetes import, infrastructure analysis, and manifest projection;
- deterministic fixture and generated-byte checks across the workspace.
Support boundaries
These rows describe the source checkout. Dated conformance evidence remains scoped to its original
release observation; publishing a newer source tag does not re-run that evidence.
Output and CLI metadata checks establish kinds, versions and availability; the linked owners and
tests establish the bounded support and refusals. The offline cargo xtask support --check compares
this complete maintained block. It does not verify remote release records.
The source checkout’s workspace version is 0.23.0 and includes separately documented unreleased changes.
| Capability | Current source | Limits and evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Default projections | docs, site, schema, openapi, asyncapi | Generator inventory and actual CLI artifacts; ess-gen. docs-ir is an additional explicit choice. |
| Documentation | docs: Markdown with Mermaid diagrams | A projection of the document model; docs emitter establishes rendering, not implementation behavior. |
| Site | site: HTML and local stylesheet/Mermaid assets; explicit output at index.html and assets/, combined output under site/ | Explicit authored pages and downloads are supported; ESS does not host the site. authored-site tests. |
| Document IR | Explicit docs-ir: docs-ir/document.json, ess-docs/1 | A document projection, not HTML or a general persisted EssIr reader. document emitter. |
| JSON Schema | https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema | Named types, entities, command inputs, events and errors; structural validation does not establish behavior. schema emitter/tests. |
| Native API projections | OpenAPI 3.1.0; AsyncAPI 3.0.0 | Projection directions; OpenAPI emitter/tests and AsyncAPI emitter/tests own their structural coverage. |
| Adapter directions | infra import: kubernetes, openapi; generate project: buildkit, helm, kubernetes, openapi | Availability comes from CLI help. No AsyncAPI importer is declared; the following rows qualify each adapter. |
| OpenAPI adapter | Supported 3.1 service/interface import to ess-openapi-import/1, retaining source and accounting; checked projection | External references refuse. Semantic gaps, unresolved references and legacy interface-only inputs block checked projection; annotation normalization alone may be allowed. accounting tests and import/refusal owner. |
| Kubernetes import | Sanitized observation bundle or explicit live context to infrastructure IR | The live scanner is the credential edge. A fixed category list and empty coverage_gaps do not prove complete observation. import/redaction owner. |
| Kubernetes projection | Intent plus observed IR to patches, new objects and obligations | No apply operation; unstated decisions remain obligations and unsupported conditions may refuse. projection/refusal tests. |
| BuildKit and Helm projection | Checked build IR to Dockerfile/Bake inputs; runtime IR to a configuration-neutral Helm chart | These projections neither execute BuildKit nor apply a chart or establish live resource availability. deployment projection tests. |
| Structural synthesis | rust, go, web, clap | Generated structure plus obligations/refusals, not business behavior. All four full targets refuse modeled Binary64; separate structural data libraries have their own support boundary. feasibility tests and synthesis guide. |
| Clap synthesis | Command grammar, completion support and handler seams receiving clap::ArgMatches; generated clap and clap_complete 4 dependencies | No additional type layer or implemented command behavior. Clap emitter and handler tests. |
| Typed CLI presentation | specify cli validates ess-cli/1 to ess-cli-plan/1; generate cli emits a Rust/Clap package, help, Bash completion and reference with ess-cli-artifacts/1 and ess-cli-generation/1; --check compares generated bytes | Typed inputs, results and declared errors remain model-owned; unsupported types and invariants refuse. Process context is separate from payloads. Application behavior requires Handler, dynamic native validation requires DynamicValidator, and the generated default handler is unavailable. binding admission tests and projection and process tests. |
| Conformance targets | billing, oracle-fixture | Built-in reference implementations. A production adapter must establish its own execution boundary; these targets do not prove independent deployment. |
| Conformance formats | Defaults: ess-conformance/4, ess-conformance-report/1. Explicit count surfaces: ess-conformance-report/2, ess-conformance-run/2. CLI suite choices: 4, 5 (default 4); report choices: 1, 2 (default 1). | Actual report markers and CLI metadata; all-pass legacy execution can still mean inconclusive conformance. count-report tests. |
| Coverage qualification | Current-source ess-conformance/5 requires explicit report/2 before execution | Only a nonempty all-pass selection with complete inventory and no in-scope refusal can qualify. Suite/5, carrier and paired replay are unreleased relative to the dated 0.20.0 observation. coverage CLI tests and conformance guide. |
| Browser conformance | Replay presentation with no execution report | A green replay is not independent execution evidence; digest comparison does not authenticate the publisher. browser admission tests. |
| Runtime compilation | Checks supplied identities, component coverage, replica bounds and stateful storage | Does not establish live provisioning or all resource requirements. runtime checks/tests. |
| Explicit executors | execute, publish, fetch, reconcile invoke external clients; reconciliation requires --authority naming a protected registry entry and refuses without one, compares an admitted baseline desired deployment with the desired one, and attempts at most one admitted mutation per release | Caller-supplied state, authority and credentials remain material; a supplied baseline is admitted intent rather than proof of application, and a stopped invocation leaves the affected release unknown rather than absent or rolled back. CLI executor owner. The support check invokes none of these verbs. |
| Schema commands | import-bundle, import-document, project-bundle, validate-bundle, types-bundle, normalize-check, normalize-run, normalize-generate, validate, typescript | Current-source command inventory for import, validation, types and normalization; CLI reference describes the selected operations. Availability is independent of the dated release record. |
More columns: swipe horizontally, or focus the table and use the arrow keys.
The CLI presents four areas: specify, generate, verify, and infra. Earlier flat spellings
remain hidden aliases with the same accepted-command output and exit status.
Compilation and projection remain deterministic and offline. Live Kubernetes import and the
commands named execute, publish, fetch, and reconcile are explicit credential edges; they do
not turn ESS into a continuously running deployment control plane.
The offline repository gate is task check. The documentation and browser-lab gate is
task site-build because installing the pinned npm dependency graph requires network access.
Compatibility posture
Persisted v1 formats retain their current identity, reference, and canonicalization rules. Internal Rust types do not by themselves create a new format. A strict old reader must be tested before an additive field is written to a format that rejects unknown keys.