Architecture

Architecture

Zinc is the conductor between Circuitry, packages, and history.

The three ownership boundaries

Circuitry

Circuitry owns the YAML shape:

circuitry
name
about
in
out
$value references

It flattens grouped in and out references so Zinc sees the value boundaries.

Circuitry does not know about:

packages
surface
preserve
runtime.parallel
packet_limit

Those are Zinc concepts.

Packages

Packages own behavior.

A package can expose:

surfaces
settings
docs
scripts
shapes
assets
software

Package surfaces receive YAML and return YAML. Package settings stay package-owned unless a user explicitly copies or references them elsewhere.

Zinc

Zinc owns the host runtime:

package install records
URI resolution
surface navigation
process invocation
request construction
response field selection
runtime.parallel
per-package packet limits
event and packet history

Zinc does not infer default surfaces. If an entry should call a package surface, the entry says so with surface.

Execution flow

shape file
  -> Circuitry parse
  -> Zinc ready-wave executor
  -> package surface YAML request
  -> package surface YAML response
  -> active run values
  -> event and packet history

Markdown files enter through the same path after Zinc extracts YAML front matter.