External URI References

External URI References

Elaborates Design Spec §4.5 (External URI references — the git+RDF foundation; normative source) and §9.A.4 acceptance criteria U1–U6. Cross-reference with §4.8 (three-layer artifact + reproducibility manifest) and §4.9 (reproducibility chain).

Status: Ships in v0.1. Foundational to the open-source / self-hostable thesis. The ADCS prototype already operates this way (Docker compute backend emits prov:atLocation, prov:wasAssociatedWith, prov:startedAtTime); v0.1 formalizes the vocabulary, adds SHACL discipline, and binds the result into the audit report's reproducibility manifest.

These references are not cosmetic. They are the load-bearing mechanism by which flexo-rtm's certification artifacts achieve open-source interoperability, portability, auditability, and reproducibility — without proprietary dependencies, without living-service dependencies, and without lock-in to any single tool.

1. The premise — RDF as a non-closed world

The RDF graph in flexo-rtm is not a closed world. It carries metadata about evidence, models, attestations, and activities — but the actual content lives outside: in git repositories, on filesystems, in object storage, in container registries, on IPFS. The RDF entities reference that content via URI, and those references are first-class.

Without external URIs the RDF is metadata floating free of any anchor: nothing computable can be re-fetched, re-hashed, or re-executed. With them, the RDF becomes an index over a content-addressable open-source world — a verifier can git clone, oras pull, curl, ipfs get, recompute hashes, and compare to the values recorded in the graph using only standard tooling.

2. Entity classes that bear external URI references

Two flexo-rtm classes carry external URI references and pull in PROV-O semantics:

• rtm:Activity (rdfs:subClassOf prov:Activity) — a process: simulation run, model build, test execution, proof check, data import. The principal site of the git+OCI provenance pattern.
• rtm:Artifact (rdfs:subClassOf prov:Entity) — an addressable artifact: model file, evidence file, simulation result, dataset. The principal site of the content-hash pattern.

Attestations (per Design Spec §4.3) reference activities; activities reference artifacts; artifacts carry content hashes. The chain is locally re-traversable.

3. The reference vocabulary (v0.1, normative)

The vocabulary lives in ontology/core/ and is committed to v0.1 stability.

Property	Range	Purpose
rtm:hasGitRepo	xsd:anyURI	Git repository URL. Works against any git host: GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Gitea/Forgejo, bare repos over HTTPS or SSH.
rtm:hasGitCommit	xsd:string	Full commit SHA. Cryptographically pins the tree and all parents.
rtm:hasGitPath	xsd:string	Optional path within the repo. Scopes a reference to a specific file or subdirectory.
rtm:hasContentHash	xsd:string	Algorithm-prefixed content hash, e.g., sha256:abcd1234.... Canonical content addressing for artifact bytes.
rtm:hasOCIImage	xsd:string	OCI image reference with digest, e.g., ghcr.io/org/image@sha256:def.... Resolvable against any OCI-compliant registry (Docker Hub, ghcr, ECR, GAR, Quay, Harbor).
dcat:downloadURL	xsd:anyURI	Optional fetch URL: mirror, raw-content URL, IPFS gateway, S3 link. The integrity guarantee is the content hash, not this URL.

The vocabulary composes with standard PROV-O: prov:wasDerivedFrom, prov:used, prov:wasGeneratedBy, prov:atLocation, prov:hadPlan, prov:startedAtTime, prov:endedAtTime, prov:wasAssociatedWith. PROV-O carries the relationships; rtm:* carries the content references.

4. Turtle examples

4.1 An activity that ran a simulation

@prefix rtm:  <https://flexo-rtm.org/ontology/core#> .
@prefix prov: <http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#> .
@prefix dcat: <http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#> .
@prefix xsd:  <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

:simulation-run-2026-05-16-001 a rtm:Activity ;
    prov:startedAtTime "2026-05-16T14:30:00Z"^^xsd:dateTime ;
    prov:endedAtTime   "2026-05-16T14:31:42Z"^^xsd:dateTime ;
    rtm:hasGitRepo  <https://github.com/example-org/adcs-sim> ;
    rtm:hasGitCommit "9f3a17c4e2b8d6f5a1c9e7b3d8f6a4c2e1b9d7f5" ;
    rtm:hasGitPath  "scripts/slew_maneuver.py" ;
    rtm:hasOCIImage "ghcr.io/example-org/adcs-sim@sha256:def7891ab2c3d4e5f6789a0b1c2d3e4f5a6b7c8d9e0f1a2b3c4d5e6f7a8b9c0d1" ;
    prov:used         :orbit-params-input ;
    prov:wasAssociatedWith <https://github.com/zargham> .

:orbit-params-input a rtm:Artifact ;
    rtm:hasContentHash "sha256:1a2b3c4d5e6f7a8b9c0d1e2f3a4b5c6d7e8f9a0b1c2d3e4f5a6b7c8d9e0f1a2b" ;
    dcat:downloadURL <https://data.example.org/orbit-params-2026.csv> .

:simulation-result-001 a rtm:Artifact ;
    rtm:hasContentHash "sha256:f1e2d3c4b5a6978869594a3b2c1d0e9f8a7b6c5d4e3f2a1b0c9d8e7f6a5b4c3d2" ;
    prov:wasGeneratedBy :simulation-run-2026-05-16-001 .

A third party with the values above can git clone + git checkout 9f3a17c4, docker pull ghcr.io/example-org/adcs-sim@sha256:def7891a..., fetch the orbit-params CSV and verify its content hash, then re-execute the simulation and compare the output's hash to sha256:f1e2d3c4.... No proprietary protocol; no shared credentials; no live flexo-rtm service required.

4.2 An attestation referencing an activity

:attestation-thermal-validated a rtm:SufficiencyAttestation ;
    rtm:satisfies :evidence-thermal-cycle :req-thermal-margins ;
    rtm:approvedBy <https://github.com/zargham> ;
    prov:atTime "2026-05-16T15:00:00Z"^^xsd:dateTime ;
    prov:wasGeneratedBy :simulation-run-2026-05-16-001 .

The attestation binds a satisfaction claim to a named approver, and the activity that produced the supporting evidence is reachable via prov:wasGeneratedBy. That activity carries the git+OCI references — the chain from attestation → activity → external URIs is fully traversable in the RDF, and the URIs hand off to standard tooling for re-fetch.

4.3 A model artifact referenced by git path plus content hash

:model-rigid-body-dynamics a rtm:Artifact ;
    rtm:hasGitRepo  <https://github.com/example-org/adcs-models> ;
    rtm:hasGitCommit "c7d2f8a3b1e0d9c8b7a6f5e4d3c2b1a0e9f8d7c6" ;
    rtm:hasGitPath  "src/dynamics/rigid_body.smt2" ;
    rtm:hasContentHash "sha256:b3a1f9c8d7e6f5a4b3c2d1e0f9a8b7c6d5e4f3a2b1c0d9e8f7a6b5c4d3e2f1a0" .

The git path locates the file for human review; the content hash pins the exact bytes. The two MUST agree, and an audit-mode oracle MAY verify the agreement (per U2).

5. SHACL discipline (v0.1)

The vocabulary is governed by a SHACL shape in ontology/shapes/. The default severity is sh:Warning; the --profile=strict-provenance profile upgrades to sh:Violation.

@prefix sh:  <http://www.w3.org/ns/shacl#> .
@prefix rtm: <https://flexo-rtm.org/ontology/core#> .

rtm:ActivityProvenanceShape a sh:NodeShape ;
    sh:targetClass rtm:Activity ;
    sh:or (
        [ sh:path rtm:hasGitCommit ; sh:minCount 1 ]
        [ sh:path rtm:hasOCIImage  ; sh:minCount 1 ]
    ) ;
    sh:severity sh:Warning ;
    sh:message "Activity should reference at least one of git commit or OCI image for reproducibility" .

This shape implements acceptance criterion U1 (Design Spec §9.A.4): any rtm:Activity SHOULD carry at least one of rtm:hasGitCommit or rtm:hasOCIImage, with --profile=strict-provenance upgrading SHOULD to MUST/error. The default profile lets adopters incrementally adopt the discipline; the strict profile is for organizations whose policy mandates full provenance on every activity.

Companion shapes constrain content-hash format (algorithm prefix required), OCI reference syntax (registry + image + @sha256:-style digest), git commit length, and well-formedness of dcat:downloadURL. All default to warnings; the strict-provenance profile upgrades them.

6. Why these specific URI schemes — the open-source rationale

Each scheme is open, content-addressable, and free of proprietary chokepoints.

• git URLs + commit hashes. A commit hash is cryptographically immutable: same hash, same tree, every client. Clones work over HTTPS, SSH, file, or git wire; no single host is required.
• sha256: content hashes. Any storage layer — filesystem, S3, HTTP, IPFS, git-LFS, DVC, Datalad, Nix store — produces the same hash for the same bytes. The hash is the identity; storage is interchangeable.
• OCI image digests. ghcr.io/org/image@sha256:digest is resolvable against Docker Hub, ghcr, ECR, GAR, Quay, Harbor, Zot, or any OCI-conformant registry. oras pull / docker pull fetch; cosign verify checks signatures.
• dcat:downloadURL. A W3C-standard vocabulary for fetch hints, interoperable with data catalogs and dataset registries.

The alternative — proprietary identifiers — locks adopters to the issuing system and defeats the open-source thesis.

7. What each URI enables independently

Property	What it enables
Reproducibility	Fetch the same bytes, run the same code in the same image, get the same result. No proprietary auth, no living-service dependency, no link rot.
Auditability	A third party computes the content hash of fetched bytes, compares to the recorded hash, and verifies that the inputs match the claims.
Portability	The same RDF is consumable by any compliant tool. Migrating between hosts (GitHub → Forgejo, ghcr → Harbor) does not invalidate references — the hashes are stable.
Interoperability	DVC, Datalad, Nix, IPFS, git-LFS, OCI registries can all resolve these URIs through their native protocols. flexo-rtm does not dictate a single fetcher.

8. The ADCS prototype precedent

The pattern is not new. The ADCS lifecycle demo (ADCS-lifecycle-demo/evidence/binding.py) already emits the PROV envelope on activities:

<urn:adcs:activity:SA-001> a prov:Activity ;
    prov:atLocation         <urn:adcs:location:engineering-workstation> ;
    prov:wasAssociatedWith  <urn:adcs:executor:SymPyEngine> ;
    prov:startedAtTime      "2025-..."^^xsd:dateTime .

The prototype demonstrates the shape of the discipline; what it lacks is full OCI-digest capture and SHACL verification. v0.1 closes that gap by formalizing rtm:hasGitCommit, rtm:hasOCIImage, and rtm:hasContentHash as first-class properties and adding the SHACL shape above. The prototype's Docker backend is the empirical seed — patterns that worked in practice are the patterns v0.1 standardizes.

9. Co-versioning with the storage layer (Flexo)

When the operational layer commits an attestation, the underlying activity's git refs and OCI digests are captured in the same atomic transaction. This is the Flexo Git Coexistence property: model + traceability + execution environment all version together. The cert run's HEAD commit is recorded on the cert artifact; the activity that ran the pipeline carries its own rtm:hasGitCommit and rtm:hasOCIImage; transcript / attestation graph / audit report carry content hashes computed at commit time.

A future verifier can reconstruct exactly the state of the model + traceability + execution environment at the time the cert was emitted, by checking out the recorded commit and pulling the recorded image. Acceptance criterion U6 (Design Spec §9.A.4) requires that URI references persist verbatim through Flexo round-trips (no normalization, no rewriting). See Storage Layer Flexo Conventions.

10. Reproducibility chain — three dimensions

The full reproducibility story has five dimensions (see Design Spec §4.9). This page focuses on the three rooted in external URI references; the remaining two are covered in their own pages.

RDF-internal (canonical equivalence). Inputs to any cert step are RDFC-1.0 canonicalized to an input-hash. The transcript records (input-hash, recorded-result-hash) per step. A verifier with read access to the input subgraph can re-execute locally and confirm byte-identical results. See RDFC-1.0 Canonicalization and Transcript Replay Semantics.

External re-fetch (re-execution). Activities carry git+commit, content-hash, and OCI-digest URIs. A verifier with fetch access can re-execute the activity from scratch — pull the code at the recorded commit, fetch the data at the recorded content hash, run the recorded image, content-hash the outputs, compare to the recorded artifact hashes. Acceptance criteria U2 (content-hash verification), U3 (git commit existence), and U4 (OCI digest existence) gate this dimension in audit mode. Verifiers without fetch access can still verify structural completeness of the references (well-formed, registered in the manifest, consistent with the profile) by reading the RDF alone — acceptance criterion X8 in §9.A.5.

Approver binding. The git commit introducing an attestation triple is GPG/SSH-signed by the named approver (when signed-commits is active). The signature key resolves to the rtm:approvedBy IRI's published key, binding "this human attested this fact at this time" to public-key infrastructure verifiers already trust. See Approver Binding via Git.

A fourth dimension — signed envelopes (W3C Data Integrity, DSSE+in-toto, Sigstore cosign, Rekor) — composes orthogonally with these references; see Signed Envelopes and Established Standards. A fifth — identity projection (the projection-as-of-cert-time of identities and policies, recorded in the transcript) — is covered by Identity Boundaries and Policy Projections.

Together: a complete reproducibility chain end-to-end, with no proprietary dependencies anywhere in the chain.

11. Reproducibility manifest

Acceptance criterion U5 (Design Spec §9.A.4) requires every audit report to include a Reproducibility Manifest enumerating every external URI the cert depends on, organized by URI type. The manifest format is normatively defined in spec/transcript-model.md; the structure:

• Git refs — (rtm:hasGitRepo, rtm:hasGitCommit, rtm:hasGitPath?) triples, deduplicated.
• Content hashes — (algorithm, hash, dcat:downloadURL?) entries, deduplicated.
• OCI digests — (registry, image, digest, cosign-bundle?) entries, deduplicated.

A third party uses the manifest as a checklist: for each row, fetch the content (git clone+git checkout, curl, oras pull), compute the hash (commit-tree, sha256, OCI digest), compare to the recorded value. The manifest passes if every row passes. The audit report records the outcome.

Crucially, the manifest is structurally complete even when the verifier cannot dereference. Per acceptance criterion X8, a verifier without network access can still confirm that every URI in the manifest is well-formed and that every external reference appearing in the RDF is registered in the manifest. Dereferencing is required for re-execution; not for structural validation.

12. Tooling that consumes these URIs (no flexo-rtm lock-in)

Standard tools resolve the v0.1 vocabulary natively:

• git clone / git checkout <commit> — source
• oras pull / docker pull / skopeo copy — OCI images
• cosign verify — OCI signatures (cosign-images profile)
• curl / wget / ipfs get — dcat:downloadURL retrieval
• DVC / Datalad / git-LFS / Nix — content-hash-driven fetch
• sha256sum / openssl dgst — content-hash verification

flexo-rtm produces references; consumers use whatever tooling fits. The format is the contract, not the tool.

13. What v0.1 ships

• The six properties in §3 in ontology/core/.
• rtm:ActivityProvenanceShape and companion shapes in ontology/shapes/, defaulting to warning severity.
• --profile=strict-provenance upgrading severities to error.
• Reproducibility-manifest emitter in the audit-report generator (per U5).
• Flexo round-trip preservation per U6, tested in tests/integration/flexo/test_uri_preservation.py.
• Integration tests against ADCS Docker-backend activities, exercising the end-to-end pattern.
• An optional audit-mode oracle path (off by default) performing U2 / U3 / U4 checks against live registries.

14. What v0.1 does NOT do — the boundary

• No fetcher. The references are produced; consumption is by external tooling. Building a fetcher would couple flexo-rtm to a specific tool stack.
• No content-hash verification at cert time. It is an audit-time check (per U2), opt-in via audit mode. Cert-time SHACL operates on the RDF metadata; it does not block on the network.
• No online dependency during cert. Cert is offline-clean; consumption of references is a separate concern.
• No recursive registry of pre-approved artifact types. That registry belongs to the future topological framework. Forward compatibility is preserved — when the framework lands, it operates against URI references already captured under v0.1 conventions.
• No new URI schemes. Every property reuses an established standard (git, sha256, OCI, DCAT). The point is to compose, not to invent.

15. Forward compatibility with the topological framework

When the future topological framework is built (Topological Framework Future Work), every assurance-triangle vertex references external URIs via this exact vocabulary: an Artifact carries rtm:hasContentHash, a Guidance vertex carries rtm:hasGitRepo+rtm:hasGitCommit+rtm:hasGitPath, a Requirement references its source spec the same way. The URI vocabulary is stable across v0.1 and the future framework. Adopters of v0.1 accumulate data that remains valid when the framework lands.

16. Acceptance criteria recap (§9.A.4 U1–U6)

ID	Criterion (paraphrase from Design Spec §9.A.4)
U1	Any rtm:Activity SHOULD carry rtm:hasGitCommit or rtm:hasOCIImage; --profile=strict-provenance upgrades to MUST/error.
U2	Audit mode MAY fetch rtm:hasContentHash references; computed hash MUST equal recorded hash or audit emits T-fetch-mismatch.
U3	Audit mode: fetching rtm:hasGitRepo+rtm:hasGitCommit MUST succeed.
U4	Audit mode: fetching rtm:hasOCIImage digest MUST succeed; cosign-verifiable under --profile=cosign-images.
U5	Every audit report MUST include a Reproducibility Manifest organized by URI type.
U6	URI references persist verbatim through Flexo round-trips (no normalization, no rewriting).

These six are the v0.1 release gate for the artifact-identity boundary. If this page's prose conflicts with the criteria, the criteria win.

17. Cross-references

• Design Spec §4.5 (normative source), §4.8 (artifact + manifest), §4.9 (reproducibility chain), §9.A.4 (U1–U6)
• Verifiable Self-Certification — the artifact that consumes these references
• Storage Layer Flexo Conventions — round-trip preservation (U6)
• Flexo Git Coexistence — co-versioning of model + traceability + environment
• RDFC-1.0 Canonicalization — RDF-internal reproducibility
• Transcript Replay Semantics — manifest recording and replay
• Approver Binding via Git — approver-binding dimension
• Signed Envelopes and Established Standards — signature dimension
• Identity Boundaries and Policy Projections — identity-projection dimension
• ADCS Prototype Lessons — empirical seed
• Topological Framework Future Work — forward compatibility