Decision Gate Authoring Formats

Decision Gate accepts ScenarioSpec authoring input in JSON or RON. JSON is the canonical format used for hashing, schemas, and runpacks. RON exists only as a human-friendly authoring layer and must be normalized to canonical JSON before execution.

Canonical JSON

• Canonical JSON uses RFC 8785 (JCS) for deterministic ordering.
• ScenarioSpec hashes are computed over canonical JSON bytes.
• Canonical JSON is emitted by decision-gate authoring normalize.

Supported Inputs

• JSON: canonical format for storage, hashing, and validation.
• RON: authoring-only format normalized to canonical JSON.
• YAML: not supported by default (add only with explicit requirement).

Normalization Pipeline

1. Parse JSON or RON into a structured value.
2. Validate against schemas/scenario.schema.json.
3. Run ScenarioSpec semantic validation (IDs, conditions, gates).
4. Canonicalize to JSON (RFC 8785).
5. Compute the canonical spec hash.

Limits

• Max authoring input size: 16777216 bytes.
• Max nesting depth: 64.

CLI Usage

Validate RON authoring input:

decision-gate authoring validate --input examples/scenario.ron --format ron

Normalize to canonical JSON:

decision-gate authoring normalize --input examples/scenario.ron --format ron \
  --output examples/scenario.json

References

• examples/scenario.ron: authoring example in RON.
• examples/scenario.json: canonical JSON output.
• schemas/scenario.schema.json: JSON Schema for ScenarioSpec.