draft

draft 1.0.0
  status candidate
  title draft — meta-specification
  date 2026-05-24
  license Open

---

spec draft

  section introduction
    title Introduction
    level 1

    prose
      value
        draft is the notation in which all byre specifications are
        written. It defines an abstract syntax tree, a conformance
        model, and a requirement declaration system. draft validates
        itself.

    prose
      value
        A draft document has four properties simultaneously, and
        cannot sacrifice any one of them for the others.

    requirement D-001
      level MUST
      value
        Human-legible. Plain text. No encoding obscures meaning. A
        person can sit down, read it, and understand it. Clarity is
        the constraint.

    requirement D-002
      level MUST
      value
        Machine-legible. For the same reason it is legible to
        humans. LLMs read it directly, without translation layers.

    requirement D-003
      level MUST
      value
        Syntactically unambiguous. A defined abstract syntax tree.
        Machines can parse it, conformance can be tested, and it
        renders losslessly to any format.

    requirement D-004
      level MUST
      value
        Self-bootstrapping. draft is written in its own notation.
        The specification specifies itself. Self-referential without
        being self-defeating.

  section document-structure
    title Document structure
    level 1

    prose
      value
        A draft document consists of a version declaration followed
        by a single spec node. The version declaration appears on
        the first line. Everything else is content of the spec node.

    requirement D-010
      level MUST
      value
        The version declaration MUST appear on the first line and
        MUST identify the draft format version used. It is metadata,
        not part of the document tree.

  section conformance
    title Conformance
    level 1

    prose
      value
        draft defines three conformance levels: core (the minimum to
        be a valid implementation), validatable (everything
        machine-testable), and full (complete conformance including
        SHOULD requirements and self-validation).

    requirement D-020
      level SHOULD
      value
        Implementations SHOULD declare which level they target and
        publish their conformance results alongside the
        implementation.