NEXT temporary contract 3.20 — Extreme Total Observability and IDE compatibility as a product law
01Temporary normative staging unit. Its body is the accepted architecture from refined plan revision 4, section 3.20. Before production code cites this law, promote the relevant clauses into permanent specifications. This file is consumed only after semantic coverage, implemented behavior and retained evidence are accepted. The task/retirement checker cannot perform semantic acceptance.
02Accepted D-025/D-026: every VibeVM capability, semantically meaningful internal structure, processing decision, state transition, action and refusal has an externally discoverable, machine-readable contract. This is Extreme Total Observability (ETO), a whole-product invariant. IDE compatibility follows from that invariant and a complete action interface; it is not satisfied by adding JSON to selected CLI commands or only to the boot debugger.
03The intended external experience spans package/source/dependency trees, configuration/choice explanations, authored specifications and references, compiler stages/boot debugger, change/lifecycle/evidence, tools/providers/adapters, home generations, Linux roots, Docker images/build stages and network services. A client can navigate from an installed executable or image layer to the contributing package, chosen configuration, source capture, producer and receipt, and inspect why an action was taken or refused. This describes required capabilities; it does not choose an IDE, screens, plugin packaging, an MVP or a product roadmap for a new IDE.
04ETO closure rule: no supported functionality may exist only in a CLI branch, TUI key script, prose log or private debug dump. No unexplained omission of internal model families. A mutation is available through its owning typed application service and authority policy; an inspection view exposes the same semantic data the engine uses. Access restrictions, unsupported targets/providers, unavailable observers, redaction, uncaptured values and incomplete scopes are explicit typed states with reasons. A known feature missing its service implementation is a delivery gap, not a contextual unsupported result that closes the gate.
05ETO does not mean exposing credentials, raw process memory, filesystem handles or arbitrary setters for internal state. Publish complete semantic inspection schemas with root/principal-scoped access and explicit redaction metadata. Low-level incidental implementation layout is not the stable product contract. Debug-only views may use separately versioned provider/diagnostic epochs; they remain discoverable and inspectable and must not be hidden merely because their schema changes faster. Production state still changes only through validated domain operations.
06CapabilityCoverage register: enumerate every existing and planned domain operation, query, diagnostic, state carrier and trace/model family. Each row binds stable namespaced capability/model ID, domain owner, input/result/error/event schemas, source authority, supported contexts/targets, expected effects, authorization, completeness semantics, observation/retention modes and executable external-coverage tests. Availability is distinct from implementation status and authorization. The registry includes legacy commands, source conversions, install/reinstall/update/uninstall/clean, binary dispatch, settings, registry/cache/version-manager operations, tree/provenance, lifecycle controls, publication and every M-01…M-15 deliverable.
07Generate operation discovery and schema references from owning registries; compare public command/action registrations and model-family inventories with the coverage register in CI. An exhaustive list of names or matching counts does not prove functionality: each supported row needs a real structured read or action/result scenario. Pure presentation preferences (viewport, cursor, local panel arrangement) stay client state, while every domain value/action behind them follows ETO. This is an interface-completeness record, not a scheduler or a second requirements truth.