ADR 0005: Reference Factory and Proprietary Build Intelligence Boundary¶

Date: 2026-08-24

Status: Accepted

Supersedes: ADR 0002 in part; ADR 0003 in part

ADR 0002 and ADR 0003 remain accepted historical decisions and are partially superseded only as described below.

Decision¶

Mozaiks OSS remains a complete, independently useful AI app factory with a capable reference generation and refinement strategy. BlocUnited keeps customer-derived, fleet-derived, learned, internally optimized, or otherwise commercially differentiating build intelligence private by default.

The governing rule is:

Publish the canonical contracts, generic engines, and a capable reference strategy. Deliberately review optimized strategy and keep learned operational intelligence private by default.

This classification concerns provenance and information content, not value or sophistication alone. Generic framework authority remains OSS even when it is commercially valuable. Private implementation policy cannot move canonical contracts, provider-neutral engines, deterministic validation, or generic extension authority into a hosted product.

Prompts, workflow YAML, scorer policy, repair heuristics, routing tables, context packs, and agent instructions are executable product intelligence. Their location in an OSS family does not by itself approve publication.

Context¶

ADR 0002 established that AppGenerator baseline strategy belongs in OSS. ADR 0003 froze the source boundary and concluded that the repository had no current extraction candidates. Those decisions correctly protected a useful, self-hostable framework, but their directory-based "OSS by default" language is too broad for future improvements.

Mozaiks now needs a durable boundary that permits a strong public reference factory without automatically publishing every optimization BlocUnited learns from operating builds, refinements, deployments, and commercial applications.

This ADR does not determine that any current file must be removed. It establishes the classification and review rule for a separate exact-file inventory.

Accepted ADR 0007 subsequently defined the generalized semantic compiler's taxonomy, manifest, graph, reference, binding, plan, renderer-registry, patch, revision, validation, and promotion contracts as versioned public framework surfaces. Completed ADR 0007 Slice 0 repaired prerequisite defects without implementing later compiler slices or changing this public/proprietary boundary. This decision must be read consistently with both facts.

Classification¶

"Reference strategy" means enough implementation for an independent user to build, inspect, validate, and refine a real application without a hosted Mozaiks dependency. It does not require publication of BlocUnited's best-performing policy, private benchmarks, learned variants, or managed operating playbooks.

Public Surface¶

The following remain OSS:

• the canonical application model and module/page/action/data contracts;
• ADR 0007's public taxonomy and semantic-compiler contract families and their generic deterministic implementations;
• the runtime, workflow engine, deterministic validators, and extension ports;
• the refinement mechanism and local/self-hosted execution path;
• provider-neutral deployment, payment, telemetry, and capability contracts;
• a capable AppGenerator reference strategy and transparent deterministic gates;
• explicit seams for optional operator-supplied policy and context.

OSS operation must not depend on a hidden call to BlocUnited services or private intelligence.

Relationship To Accepted ADR 0007¶

ADR 0007's public contracts are mechanisms, not proprietary intelligence artifacts. Their participation in generation does not reclassify them. The public boundary includes canonical taxonomy ownership, immutable semantic references, graph and binding contracts, deterministic compilation and rendering, reference closure, validation, revision and promotion authority, and the generic refinement contract.

Private intelligence may supply declared inputs or strategy through public seams. It may not become the only implementation of generic compiler behavior, redefine canonical names, bypass deterministic validation, or create a private framework authority that the OSS reference factory requires for correctness.

Private-by-Default Build Intelligence¶

The following require an ADR explicitly approving publication before entering the public repository:

• corrections or heuristics derived from customer or fleet outcomes;
• learned prompt variants, routing weights, rankings, and model-selection policy;
• proprietary eval corpora, scored outputs, benchmarks, and threshold tuning;
• failure classification and repair-selection policy derived from operations;
• cross-app architectural priors and outcome correlations;
• hosted managed-refinement, production-operations, or commercial playbooks;
• marketplace ranking, fraud, settlement, pricing, and payout policy;
• provider-specific hosted production executors and credential topology.

Generic interfaces for these capabilities may be public. Private artifacts and optimized implementations must cross the boundary only through explicit, inspectable inputs or declared ports.

Publication Test for Strategy Content¶

Before publishing a material prompt, workflow, scorer, heuristic, routing rule, or build-context pack, reviewers must record:

1. provenance: whether it is generic, authored from public knowledge, or derived from BlocUnited/customer operations;
2. ecosystem value: why publication improves adoption, trust, portability, interoperability, or contribution;
3. competitive exposure: what hard-to-retract knowledge becomes public;
4. OSS sufficiency: whether withholding it would leave the reference factory independently useful;
5. contract impact: whether it creates a new public schema, protocol, authority, or compatibility commitment.

Material uncertainty routes to publication review, not automatic publication.

Later Exact-File Inventory¶

A follow-up exact-file audit must classify content under:

• factory_app/workflows/;
• factory_app/build_context/;
• factory_app/refinement_harness/;
• factory_app/eval/;
• generator/refinement agent guidance and strategy documentation.

That later audit must identify exact files, provenance, replacement requirements, compatibility impact, license implications, and whether any action is forward-only. This ADR and its six-file documentation changes do not perform that inventory and do not claim that source extraction, repository cleansing, package removal, tag or release deletion, or history rewriting has occurred. None of those actions is authorized merely by this ADR.

History and Release Decision¶

Existing ADRs remain in the repository as decision history.

ADR 0002 is partially superseded only where "baseline strategy" could be read to approve every future strategy optimization. A capable reference AppGenerator remains OSS.

ADR 0003 is partially superseded in these areas:

• the historical "Current OSS extraction candidates: NONE" finding will not be treated as prospective approval for future content;
• additions inside DO-NOT-MOVE directories are not automatically approved for publication;
• prompt catalogs and refinement strategy require information-content and provenance review, not directory-only classification.

ADR 0003 remains accepted and continues to govern the canonical-model, generic-mechanism, App Zero no-fork, hosted-provider, commercial-policy, and evidence-based history-retention decisions.

This ADR does not authorize rewriting Git history. Public MIT-licensed material is treated as a one-way door. Historical remediation requires a separate, evidence-based decision explaining the benefit, disruption, and limitations.

Enforcement¶

• Update OSS_PUBLICATION_POLICY.md to make provenance and information content authoritative over directory placement.
• Update the OSS boundary family registry so DO-NOT-MOVE protects generic families while requiring review for private-by-default intelligence placed within them.
• Extend governance and package-content checks in a follow-up implementation PR where deterministic enforcement is feasible.
• Require an ADR before publishing a new material strategy surface, learned artifact, provider executor, commercial policy, authority path, or dataset.

Alternatives Considered¶

Keep ADR 0003 unchanged¶

Rejected. It protects a useful OSS product but can be interpreted as automatic approval for every future optimization placed in an OSS directory.

Make the entire AppGenerator proprietary¶

Rejected. That would weaken adoption, self-hosting, contributor trust, and the open canonical application ecosystem.

Publish all strategy and compete only on hosting¶

Rejected. Hosting is valuable, but publishing accumulated build intelligence by default would give away a stronger and more compounding potential moat.

Rewrite history immediately¶

Rejected. No exact-file materiality review has established that the disruption would produce meaningful protection, and previously published copies cannot be recalled.

Consequences¶

• Mozaiks OSS remains a real AI app factory rather than a hollow SDK.
• BlocUnited can compound a private moat from build, repair, deployment, and commercial outcomes.
• Strategy changes require more deliberate provenance and publication review.
• Directory ownership remains useful for architecture but is no longer a substitute for IP-boundary classification.
• Any future extraction must preserve a capable OSS replacement and follow semantic-versioning and community-communication requirements.

Reversibility¶

The policy can be relaxed later by an ADR approving publication. Accidental MIT publication cannot be reliably reversed, so uncertain proprietary-intelligence artifacts default to private review.

Affected Invariants¶

• OSS Mozaiks Is Independently Useful
• Public Framework Contracts Stay Provider-Neutral
• Different Intelligence, Same Canonical App
• App Zero Dogfoods Public Framework Contracts
• Operator Intelligence Is Explicitly Separated
• Public MIT Publication Is a One-Way Door

OSS Boundary¶

Keep OSS: canonical contracts, generic engines, deterministic validation, extension seams, ADR 0007's public semantic-compiler surfaces, and a capable reference factory.

Keep private by default: learned, customer-derived, fleet-derived, optimized build intelligence whose provenance or information content is sensitive, and hosted commercial or provider-specific production operations. This private boundary does not transfer generic framework authority out of OSS.