Five Unit Types & Nine-State Lifecycle

ELI5

Every STRATT unit is one of five Lego brick shapes — a who (role), a must/must-not (rule), a do-this (task), a recipe (chain), or a reusable part (supply). Each brick walks through nine boxes from sketch to grave; once a brick is in a stricter box, it can only move to a stricter one.

Technical Deep Dive

Source: packages/schema/src/types/{role,rule,task,chain,supply}.ts, packages/schema/src/lifecycle.ts, packages/schema/src/constants.ts.

The Five Unit Types

Lifecycle States & Restriction Hierarchy

tampered is an error state, not part of the linear pipeline. CRDT merge picks the lower priority number (more restrictive).

State Machine

stateDiagram-v2
    [*] --> draft
    draft --> review
    review --> draft
    review --> approved : gate
    approved --> review
    approved --> published : gate
    published --> active
    published --> deprecated : gate
    published --> published : patch/minor/major
    active --> deprecated : gate
    active --> active
    deprecated --> published
    deprecated --> archived
    deprecated --> tombstoned : gate
    archived --> deprecated
    archived --> tombstoned : gate
    tampered --> draft
    tombstoned --> [*]

Schema Class View

classDiagram
    class BaseUnit {
        +URI id
        +string domain
        +string slug
        +semver version
        +Fingerprint fingerprint
        +LifecycleStatus status
        +Import[] imports
        +Meta meta
    }
    class Role { +Persona persona }
    class Rule { +RuleBlock rule_block }
    class Task { +Contract contract; +Composition? prompt_body; +string council }
    class Chain { +Contract contract; +Composition composition; +string council }
    class Supply { +string supply_body }
    BaseUnit <|-- Role
    BaseUnit <|-- Rule
    BaseUnit <|-- Task
    BaseUnit <|-- Chain
    BaseUnit <|-- Supply

Key Terms

• Restriction hierarchy → CRDT-merge precedence; the more restrictive status (lower number) wins.
• Gate-required transition → review→approved, published→deprecated, active→deprecated, deprecated→tombstoned, archived→tombstoned.
• Tampered → Fingerprint mismatch; only valid forward transition is back to draft.

Q&A

Q: Which two unit types forbid a composition block? A: role, rule, and supply all forbid it (three, not two — composition is exclusive to task and chain). Source: validate.ts lines 97–104.

Q: Why does CRDT pick the more restrictive status? A: Safety. If two replicas disagree on whether a unit is published or deprecated, the deprecated wins so production never accidentally re-promotes a unit someone marked for removal.

Q: Can a tombstoned unit be revived? A: No. It is terminal. Lifecycle table has no outbound transitions from tombstoned.

Examples

A reviewer flags stratt://dev/task/boot-review@1.2.0 as obsolete:

1. active → deprecated — gate authority LEWIS-06 must approve (Pathfinder gate).
2. After 90-day grace window, deprecated → tombstoned — gate again.
3. Any chain importing the deprecated unit raises FM-07 as soon as the chain is bumped to a non-deprecated version range.