URML (open robot intent language): surfacing validated-intent + safety-envelope state in Open MCT — request for comment

[idoco2003]

Hi Open MCT community,

URML (urml.dev) is a small, Apache-2.0 language for describing robot intent: it validates a request against a capability manifest and a safety envelope, then dispatches, emitting an audit trail of what was requested, whether it validated, and what it dispatched. Unlike most things I reach out about, URML does not sit above Open MCT — Open MCT is an observability surface, not a substrate. The honest framing here is integration / visibility.

Nothing here asks Open MCT to adopt, host, or maintain anything. This is a request for comment.

URML's validation results, dispatched-intent audit trail, and safety-envelope state (the active caps, whether a request was refused and why) are themselves operational data an operator might want to watch. Surfaced as an Open MCT telemetry source, that becomes "what intent was requested, did it validate, what did it dispatch, did the envelope refuse anything." This is an integration at the observability layer, not a control relationship in either direction.

Two real questions: (1) Would a URML validated-intent / safety-envelope telemetry source be a sensible Open MCT integration, or is that outside the framework's intended scope? (2) What is the cleanest way to expose an external operational-state source to Open MCT — the telemetry adapter / plugin API — and is there interest in a small example plugin?

Full write-up: https://github.com/URML-MARS/URML/blob/main/docs/rfcs/0395-openmct-outreach.md

Thanks for Open MCT; an open mission-control framework is a great place for a validation layer's state to become visible.

Ido Yahalomi (URML, greenvh@gmail.com)

AI-assisted prose, maintainer-reviewed before posting (see VIBE.md). Human-only correspondence available on request.