# Upstream OKF upgrade — runbook

Standing policy (operator, 2026-07-26): **this library always supports the current
latest version of Google OKF.** This document is the procedure that policy runs on.
It exists because a standing policy without a procedure is an intention, and because
the v0.1 → v0.2 round produced five findings that a spec reading alone had settled
wrongly — each step below names the concrete failure it prevents.

Written after the v0.2 round. Every prevented-failure note is something that
actually happened, not a hypothetical.

## The goal that shapes the procedure: this repo is a black box

An upstream release is our problem, not our consumers'. The target cost to a repo
that consumes OKF through this library is **a re-run, and nothing else.**

That is a design commitment with teeth, not an aspiration:

- **Support is additive — a new profile, never a migration.** Existing profiles stay
  byte-stable. A consumer who does not opt in sees no change at all.
- **New public parameters are keyword-only with defaults.** A consumer's existing
  positional call sites stay source-compatible across an upgrade. This is why
  `profile` landed as `*, profile: BundleProfile = DEFAULT`: it turns additivity
  from something a consumer has to measure into a property of the signature.
- **Consumer golden fixtures must not churn.** If an upgrade rewrites bytes in a
  consumer's frozen fixtures, the upgrade is wrong, not the fixture.

**The honest boundary — state it every time, never let the black box be oversold.**
The library absorbs *shape* changes. It cannot absorb upstream changes to content the
consumer authored. v0.2 superseded `timestamp` with `generated.at` and the body
`# Citations` list with `sources`; no library change makes a consumer's existing
`timestamp` field become something else. For that class the deliverable is not
absorption but a **measured exposure report, per consumer, before they ask** — which
is what step 5 produces.

## Trigger

"Always latest" decays silently: nothing fails when upstream ships and we do not
notice. So the re-check is an item on the release checklist — run it at every
release of this library, and record the result **even when unchanged**, because an
unrecorded check is indistinguishable from a skipped one.

Check `GoogleCloudPlatform/knowledge-catalog`, path `okf/`. A version bump appears
as a commit against `okf/SPEC.md` §12 and, in the v0.2 round, as an explicit
migration commit (`okf: migrate format and tooling to Open Knowledge Format v0.2`).

## Step 1 — Pin before reading anything

Record the exact commit SHA and read everything at it.

*Prevents:* reading a moving branch and treating the result as fact. In the v0.2
round both this repo and `portfolio-optimiser-commons` independently read `main`,
which felt like two confirmations and was one unstable reference read twice. Worse,
`SPEC.md` was edited **after** the v0.2 migration commit — so "the v0.2 commit" and
"the current spec text" were different objects, and either alone would have been a
partial answer.

## Step 2 — Enumerate the whole `okf/` tree, not just `SPEC.md`

List every file and directory at the pinned commit before deciding what to read.

*Prevents:* assuming the directory you know about is the one that matters. In the
v0.2 round `okf/` held `SPEC.md`, `README.md`, `pyproject.toml`, `src/`, `tests/`,
`samples/` **and** `bundles/`. The last one held the actual v0.2 example bundles and
was not on anyone's list until the tree was enumerated.

## Step 3 — Read the shipped examples, not only the normative text

This is the step the v0.2 round skipped, and it is the reason this document exists.

**A spec says what is permitted. An example shows what upstream actually emits.**
Those differ, and when we are about to freeze a fixture and hand it to consumers,
the second one is what we are being measured against.

Two traps, both hit in the v0.2 round:

- **A directory called `samples/` was not samples of the format.**
  `okf/samples/ga4_merch_store/` is a runner config (`README.md` + `seeds.txt`) that
  drives the reference agent to *generate* a bundle. It says nothing about output
  shape. The real examples were in `okf/bundles/` — four of them.
- **Fetch tooling that converts to markdown will strip or reformat frontmatter.**
  Byte-level questions need byte-level fetches. Check for a BOM, check the trailing
  newline, check whether a value is quoted. Those three are exactly the properties
  that break downstream gates and exactly the ones a summarizing fetch destroys.

What reading the four v0.2 bundles produced, none of it derivable from `SPEC.md`:

| Finding | Consequence |
|---|---|
| No reference bundle declares `okf_version` at all; root `index.md` has no frontmatter | §12 is a MAY and upstream declines it. Our stricter posture became a *decision* instead of an assumption |
| `generated` is written for **human-authored** content (`by: human:…`) | It can never be an ownership or machine-generated predicate. Governs the collision gate |
| Real frontmatter is multi-line block YAML: block lists of multi-key mappings, nested mappings, flow sequences, booleans, dates | Re-sized the emitter work. It had been scoped against a list of strings |
| §7's canonical tool actor is `<producer>/<version>`, and upstream uses it | Counter-evidence to a recommendation we had already sent to another repo |

## Step 4 — Produce the diff, classified

From the spec's own "Changes from vN" section **plus** the example evidence,
classify every change as:

- **Breaking** — name it, and measure consumer exposure in step 5.
- **Additive** — new optional fields, new conventional headings.
- **Deferred upstream** — a format specified but its runtime protocol left to a
  future revision. The format is supportable; an unspecified runtime is not
  something to build against. Record it as out of scope *on upstream's deferral*,
  not on our preference.
- **Observed but undocumented** — present in an official bundle, not found in the
  spec sections read. Record as unresolved. Do not silently promote it to either
  category. (v0.2 round: a `not:` family in `metrics/gross-margin.md`.)

## Step 5 — Measure our exposure and each consumer's, in that order

Ours: grep the profiles, the fixtures, and the emitter for every field the diff
touches. Cite file:line. Never reason about a key set — measure it.

Theirs: for each breaking change, state what would have to be true for it to reach
them, then **ask them to measure it against their real data** rather than telling
them whether they are affected. In the v0.2 round both `portfolio-optimiser-claude`
and `linkedin-studio` came back with measured zero exposure and found the framing
useful precisely because it was falsifiable.

## Step 6 — Plan additively, then pilot before general availability

The plan is a new profile, sequenced deliverables, and stated invariants. Rollout is
pilot-first: a pre-release tag to a small pilot set chosen for signal, revised on
their feedback, then GA. Flipping the `OKF_LATEST` alias **is** the GA event, not a
merge side effect.

State each pilot test's expected results **before** the run, numbered, plus what
would surprise us. An expectation we get wrong is a better result than a clean run;
only a stated expectation can be falsified by someone else's run.

**Name fixtures by repo and path, never by path alone.** In the v0.2 round both this
repo and `portfolio-optimiser-claude` had a directory named
`examples/ingest-golden-file/` holding *different* fixtures with zero content
overlap. A pilot baseline was agreed by name, and the name pointed at two files.

## Step 7 — Inform every OKF-consuming repo

All of them, not only the pilots, and not only when something breaks.

Send a **bounded loop of directed messages, not a broadcast** — a broadcast is
inherited by every future repo, which is the wrong lifetime for a
version-specific notice.

Each message carries:

1. The version, the pinned commit, and where to read it.
2. The breaking changes by name, with the shape of the exposure — so they can
   measure themselves rather than take our word.
3. **The black-box promise and its boundary**: their cost is a re-run; existing
   profiles are byte-stable; new parameters are keyword-only. And the part we
   cannot absorb, said plainly.
4. What we want back, if anything, and what happens if they say nothing.

Consumers to cover (2026-07): `portfolio-optimiser-commons` (spec authorship),
`portfolio-optimiser`, `portfolio-optimiser-claude`, `claude-code-llm-wiki`,
`catalog`, `okr`, `linkedin-studio`, `ms-ai-architect`. Re-derive this list each
round rather than trusting it — it is a premise like any other.

## Step 8 — Close the loop in the repo

The plan doc records the pinned commit, the classified diff, the measured exposure,
and every correction a consumer sent back. Corrections stay visible: a premise that
survived verification is only known to have survived if the check is recorded, and a
claim we withdrew is only safely withdrawn if the withdrawal is written where the
claim was.

## Invariants this procedure protects

- No profile hard-codes an upstream version.
- No bundle declares a version its shape has not earned. The spec may permit
  declaring conformance without a checkpoint; we decline. *Conform first, claim
  after.*
- `DEFAULT` states commons' ingest-spec §5 layer — raised there, never patched here.
- `STRICT_V1` mirrors a consumer's ratified contract — never changed from here.
- The value of `okf_version` belongs to the catalog.
- Security stays the guard's domain in every version.