Define OpenCoven cross-repository protocol ownership and compatibility

[BunsDev]

Outcome

Define and approve one cross-repository ownership and compatibility policy for Psyche, Familiar Contract, Coven Threads, Coven, Psyche Build, Cave, SDK, runtimes, and memory before downstream implementations create competing identities or lifecycle truth.

Parent roadmap: #9
Priority: P0
Target phase: Phase 1, with design beginning during Phase 0
Accountable owner: @BunsDev

Decisions required

• Name the canonical repository for every durable identity and transition.
• Define how Familiar IDs/person bindings enter Psyche without Psyche redefining identity.
• Define how Threads authorization decisions constrain Psyche execution without either layer duplicating policy.
• Define how Coven daemon/session/runtime authority is referenced without making daemon process identity the orchestration identity.
• Define Psyche's task, graph, lane, attempt, delegation, delivery, approval, receipt, artifact, cancellation, and recovery ownership.
• Define how Psyche Build panes, worktrees, branches, tmux sessions, provider sessions, and UI selections map to—but never replace—protocol IDs.
• Define Cave's observation/approval role and cross-device continuity.
• Define SDK, runtime, and memory consumer profiles and mutation limits.
• Define version negotiation, dependency direction, compatibility canaries, release ordering, rollback, and emergency break-glass rules.
• Detect and prohibit circular canonical ownership.

Proposed ownership baseline

Domain	Canonical owner
Familiar/person binding	OpenCoven/familiar-contract
Protected-surface authorization	OpenCoven/coven-threads
Orchestration identities and lifecycle	OpenCoven/psyche
Daemon/session/persistence authority	OpenCoven/coven
Runtime descriptors and conformance	OpenCoven/coven-runtimes
Coding cockpit and reference adapter	OpenCoven/psyche-build
Human oversight UI	OpenCoven/coven-cave
Read-only public clients	OpenCoven/sdk, constrained by profile
Read-only memory access	OpenCoven/coven-memory

This table is a proposal until the decision record is reviewed and merged.

Deliverables

• Versioned ownership matrix.
• Dependency and release-order diagram.
• Producer/consumer compatibility matrix.
• ADRs for disputed boundaries and non-goals.
• Contract-change PR checklist.
• Cross-repository canary policy with immutable pins.
• Migration map from current Psyche Build local contracts.
• One executable reference flow specification.

Acceptance criteria

• Every durable ID and consequential transition has exactly one canonical owner.
• No consumer can infer authority from transport, UI state, a tracker, or a provider-local identifier.
• Cross-repository release ordering is acyclic and rollback is possible.
• A contract change cannot merge without identifying affected consumers and canary updates.
• The Psyche Build migration in Prove Psyche Build as the first Psyche-conforming reference client #13 is possible incrementally.
• Cave/iOS reconnect preserves protocol identity across transport changes.
• The final ADR is linked from all participating active roadmaps.

Non-goals

• A monorepo.
• A shared database.
• A framework rewrite.
• Requiring cloud/team infrastructure.
• Letting one product repository become the canonical owner merely because it has the first implementation.

Evidence

Link the approved decision record, ownership matrix, participating repository issues/PRs, canary policy, and reference-flow contract.

[BunsDev]

Ownership proposal is now reviewable

Draft PR #15 adds docs/PROTOCOL-OWNERSHIP.md as the first reviewable proposal for this outcome. It keeps implementation order from becoming accidental ownership and proposes an acyclic dependency direction across Familiar Contract, Threads, Psyche, Coven/Runtimes, Psyche Build, Cave, SDK, Memory, and Docs.

This is explicitly marked proposed, not approved. Before this issue can close, the decision still needs:

• exact canonical owner for every durable ID and consequential transition;
• version negotiation and release/rollback ordering;
• producer/consumer canary policy;
• the Familiar/Threads/Coven integration decisions;
• approved Psyche Build migration boundaries;
• participating-repository links.

Psyche Build issue OpenCoven/psyche-build#253 and draft PR OpenCoven/psyche-build#254 now consume this as a pending decision rather than treating product-local psyche.*/orch-* names as canonical protocol.