Contract Source of Truth

Contract Source of Truth

A developer portal can explain a contract, but explanation and authority are not the same thing.

Precedence

When consuming a DigiEmu interface, use this order:

1. Versioned machine-readable contract or schema published by the owning technology repository.
2. Versioned protocol or interface documentation that explicitly declares normative behavior.
3. Developer reference documentation such as this portal.
4. Examples and demonstrations used to teach the workflow.
5. Observed implementation behavior that is not documented as a guarantee.

A lower item should not silently override a higher one.

Why this matters

An implementation may appear to accept an undocumented field or state today. That behavior is not automatically part of the contract.

Similarly, an example may omit fields that are mandatory in a production schema. Examples are useful for understanding shape and intent, but should not be treated as complete schemas unless explicitly declared normative.

Consumer rule

If your integration depends on a machine-readable contract:

• record the exact contract or schema version;
• preserve the contract artifact with your integration evidence where practical;
• reject or isolate data that cannot be interpreted safely;
• do not infer success from missing or unknown verification state.

Documentation corrections

If this portal and an authoritative schema disagree, treat the schema as authoritative and report the documentation mismatch.