Canon Engine
The Contract

Replace us.
We designed it that way.

The Knowledge Platform Contract v2 defines every interface between Canon Engine and its consumers. Any system that conforms to this contract can substitute for Canon Engine. Any system that consumes it can be substituted for the orchestration layer. This is the boundary that makes both independently valuable.

Why a Contract

Products get replaced.
Contracts survive.

Most knowledge platforms create lock-in through proprietary APIs, custom query languages, and undocumented storage schemas. When you outgrow them or they shut down, you migrate everything.

Canon Engine inverts this. The contract is the product. The implementation is one way to fulfill it. If Google ships an enterprise knowledge layer tomorrow that conforms to the Knowledge Platform Contract, your orchestration layer doesn't change. Not a line.

Contract Version
v2.0
Status: in-review
Breaking changes: expanded scope
v1 compatibility: fully additive
Sections: 10 + evolution rules
Product Boundary

Clear ownership. No ambiguity.

ConcernCanon EngineConsumer
What is true (knowledge)OwnsConsumes
What is owed (obligations)OwnsConsumes
What is governed (invariants)Owns + enforcesRespects
Knowledge ingestionOwns all pipelinesTriggers via interface
Knowledge enrichmentOwns LLM enrichmentDoes not enrich
Knowledge storageOwns all tablesReads via query interface
Contract Sections

Ten sections. Every interface defined.

01

Knowledge Source Types

Four categories of knowledge, each with its own ingestion path, storage schema, and enrichment profile.

02

Canon Vault Documents

Frontmatter schema, document types, vault structure, path conventions, and lifecycle states.

03

Ingestion Interface

Typed payloads for transcript, email, and document ingestion with idempotency guarantees.

04

Enrichment Contract

Per-source enrichment profiles, output schemas, and the invariant that Canon docs are never enriched.

05

Obligation Registers

The primary operational interface between Canon Engine and execution systems.

06

Change Events

Typed change sets emitted when vault content changes: added, modified, deleted, superseded.

07

Query Interface

Three query modes: file-based (local), vector (semantic), structured (record-level).

08

Chunking Contract

Source-specific chunking strategies, speaker-boundary awareness, and unified chunk schema.

09

Governance Invariants

Six non-negotiable constraints, status lifecycle, and the stewardship rule.

10

Storage Ownership

Which tables Canon Engine owns, which the consumer owns, and the shared surface.

Build on the contract.

If you're evaluating knowledge infrastructure for agentic systems and you want governed truth instead of undifferentiated vectors — let's talk.

Start a Conversation →