Numinance and numinance-spec
How the proprietary runtime and the Apache-2.0 specification relate, and what each one contains.
Numinance has two parts with different licensing and different purposes. "The brain is private. The contract is open."
The Numinance runtime
The runtime is the autonomous engineering intelligence and orchestration system. It follows a fixed understand, plan, act, verify, evidence loop. It is proprietary, private and not part of numinance-spec, and these docs do not describe its internals. Where a page describes runtime behaviour, it is marked Under development so design is never read as shipped.
numinance-spec
numinance-spec is the open contract. It is licensed under Apache-2.0 and is intended to be inspected and implemented independently.
| Path | Contents |
|---|---|
proto/ | Protobuf definitions: shared types, plugin and host services, ports, governance annotations, configuration kinds |
schemas/ | JSON Schemas and examples for configuration kinds |
docs/evidence/ | The normative evidence/v1 pages |
sdk/ | Go, Python and TypeScript SDK sources (see SDKs) |
plugins/ | Sample and official plugins |
conformance/ | Conformance suites and vectors |
rfcs/ | Design proposals, including the evidence chain format |
cli/ | The open numi CLI |
GOVERNANCE.md, VERSIONING.md | Project rules |
Three distinct objects
| Object | What it is | Licence |
|---|---|---|
numi | The open CLI for validating configuration and verifying evidence | Apache-2.0 |
| numinance-spec | The repository that holds the contract, SDKs, plugins, conformance and the CLI | Apache-2.0 |
| The runtime | The autonomous engineer | Proprietary, not generally available |
Installing numi does not install an autonomous engineer.
Why the split matters
A third party can build an adapter, generate a client, validate configuration or verify an evidence export using only the open contract. None of these requires the runtime. Build once against the contract. Bring your own capabilities.
See Open vs proprietary components for the boundary in detail and Status for what is claimed today.