Conformance Guide

ARPA conformance is multidimensional:

• protocol: schemas and API contracts;
• semantic: state transitions and processing outcomes;
• cryptographic: canonicalization, digests, proofs and key binding;
• operational: freshness, replay, recovery and availability evidence;
• governance: issuer competence, recognition, appeal and separation of duties;
• enforcement: revocation propagation and acknowledgement.

A schema-valid implementation is not automatically operationally or governance conformant. Publish a Conformance Declaration and an Implementation Report for every claimed profile.

Conformance pathway

flowchart LR
    Claim[Conformance claim] --> Profile[Claimed profile]
    Profile --> Declaration[Conformance Declaration]
    Declaration --> Report[Implementation Report]
    Report --> Tests[Test vectors and validation results]
    Tests --> Evidence[Retained evidence bundle]
    Evidence --> Review[Reviewer or relying-party decision]

Profiles

Profile	Definition	Required for
Profile A: Discovery	ARPA-Core	Identity and discovery implementations
Profile B: Accountable Operations	Core, Relations, Assurance and Evidence	Operational registries without delegated authority
Profile C: Delegated Authority	Profile B plus Authority	Implementations making delegated-authority decisions
Profile D: High Assurance	Profile C plus Federation and stronger evidence	Cross-registry or high-assurance deployments

Required and supporting artefacts

Artefact	Repository location	Purpose
Conformance Declaration schema	schemas/conformance-declaration.schema.json	Machine-validates the claimed profile and implementation identity
Valid declaration example	examples/valid/conformance-declaration.json	Demonstrates the declaration structure
Implementation Report template	Template	Records multidimensional test and assurance results
Implementation Report schema	conformance/reports/implementation-report.schema.json	Validates implementation-report structure
Reference implementation report	conformance/reports/reference-implementation-report.json	Repository-controlled example evidence
Core vectors	TV-A-01-active-record.json and adjacent vectors	Tests core protocol outcomes
Extended governance vectors	EV-01-digest-stable.json and adjacent vectors	Tests governance and enforcement outcomes
A2A v1.0 vectors	manifest.json	Enumerates tests for the optional A2A interoperability profile
Validation summary	Validation Summary	Summarises current repository evidence

Claim discipline

A declaration MUST identify the exact profile, implementation version, evidence period and known limitations. Passing repository-controlled tests is implementation evidence, not independent certification, legal recognition or proof of production fitness.

For journey selection, see Start Here. For module dependencies and non-implication rules, see Protocol modules.