Conformance

This section defines what a producer must emit, what a consumer must accept, and what validators must check in order to claim Forma v1 compatibility.

Producer conformance

Must emit valid Forma JSON per schema
Must include required document fields
Must preserve child order
Must use enums and required types correctly
Must emit issues for unsupported or ambiguous cases when relevant

Consumer conformance

Must accept any valid Forma v1 document
Must ignore unknown extension fields safely
Must not fail on absent optional fields
Should use issues, confidence, and flags in downstream behavior

Validator conformance

Must validate against JSON Schema
Must report schema violations clearly
Should report semantic warnings beyond schema when possible

Compatibility claims

An implementation may claim Forma v1 Producer, Forma v1 Consumer, or Forma v1 Validator conformance only if it satisfies the relevant requirements in this section.

Interoperability minimum

Third-party interoperability requires schema validity, stable core fields, safe extension handling, and preservation of node ordering and ids within document scope.