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SPARC — Systemized Policy and Regulatory Controls

Welcome to the official SPARC wiki. SPARC is a Rails application for managing NIST 800-53 compliance documentation — System Security Plans (SSPs), Security Assessment Results (SARs), Component Definitions (CDEFs), Security Assessment Plans (SAPs), Plans of Action & Milestones (POA&Ms), and control catalogs. It replaces spreadsheet-based workflows with a web UI and REST API, with full OSCAL export support.

Quick Links

Resource	Link
Repository	Rebel-Raiders/sparc
Releases	All releases
Issues	Open issues
Current Version	v3.4.0

Wiki Sections

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

29 roles aligned with NIST SP 800-37 Rev. 2 and OSCAL standards, 20 granular permission keys, instance vs. project scoping, and the Instance Admin bypass flag.

Screens & UI

Complete inventory of every page in the application — Controls Layer, Implementation Layer, Assessment Layer, Project Management, Evidence, Admin, and API endpoints.

Core Functions & Features

OSCAL import/export/validation, document processing pipeline, SSP wizard, control mapping, audit logging, heatmap analytics, and more.

Integrations

Authentication providers (local, GitHub, GitLab, OIDC, LDAP), deployment patterns (Docker, AWS ECS Fargate, EC2, Azure), OSCAL ecosystem, and Active Storage.

Glossary

OSCAL and NIST RMF terminology reference.

Changelog

Release history from v2.0.0 through v3.4.0.

Architecture

Domain model hierarchy, database schema, service layer, and background job architecture.

Configuration Reference

All SPARC_* environment variables for auth, database, OIDC, LDAP, SMTP, logging, and deployment.

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Tech Stack

Component	Technology
Framework	Ruby 3.4.4, Rails 8.1.2
Database	PostgreSQL 15
Background Jobs	Sidekiq + Redis
Frontend	Hotwire (Turbo + Stimulus), Bootstrap 5.3
Asset Pipeline	Propshaft, importmap (no Node build step)
Auth	OmniAuth (GitHub, GitLab, OIDC), net-ldap, bcrypt
OSCAL Validation	json_schemer (NIST OSCAL v1.1.2 schemas)
File Parsing	Roo (Excel), Nokogiri (XML)
Containerization	Docker, Docker Compose

Getting Started

# Docker (recommended)
docker compose up --build
docker compose exec web bin/rails db:seed

# Local development
bundle install
bin/rails db:create db:migrate db:seed
bin/rails server

See Configuration for all environment variables and Integrations for auth provider setup.

Contributing to the Wiki

This wiki is version-controlled via its own git repository. To contribute:

git clone https://github.com/Rebel-Raiders/sparc.wiki.git
cd sparc.wiki
# Edit or add .md files
git add . && git commit -m "Update wiki"
git push origin master

All pages use GitHub-flavored Markdown. Please include cross-references to issues, PRs, and commits where relevant.