Transfer manifest specification

Status: draft for init-core-v1. The authoritative schema is the pydantic model in src/estafette/manifest.py; this document explains it.

The transfer manifest is the declared, machine-readable answer to "what would someone need in order to take this over?" Estafette compares this declaration against the mechanical reality of the repository and reports the gaps.

Design stance

The manifest is deliberately an extension profile of publiccode.yml, not a competitor. Where a concept already exists in publiccode.yml, estafette aligns field names rather than inventing new ones. Estafette adds only the fields needed to make transferability mechanically checkable — chiefly honest status and concrete data requirements.

The manifest is a YAML file (default name transfer.yaml, overridable with --manifest).

Fields

Field	Type	Required	Notes
name	string	yes	Human-readable project name.
licence	SPDX id (string)	yes	Aligns with publiccode.yml: legal.license. Must match the repository's actual licence (checked by licence_consistency).
owner	string	yes	Owning organisation or person.
contact	string	yes	A reachable contact (email or handle). Non-empty is a bronze criterion (B6).
status	enum	yes	Honest lifecycle status: concept | poc | beta | stable | obsolete.
deps	list	no	Declared runtime dependencies; compared against imports/lockfiles by deps_reality.
deployment_target	string	no	Where this is meant to run (e.g. kubernetes, docker-compose, vm). Used by gold (roadmap).
data	object	no	Data requirements — see below.
build	object	no	How the harness builds and runs the target — see below.

build — harness recipe

Tells the build harness how to build and run the target (declared, never guessed). When absent, the silver preview is reported as not assessable.

Field	Type	Notes
containerfile	string	Path to a Containerfile/Dockerfile (default detection when omitted).
readiness	enum	stays-up (default) or exits-zero — how "reached a running state" is decided.
timeout_seconds	int	Wall-clock cap / readiness window (default 30).
cpus	number	CPU cap for the run stage.
memory	string	Memory cap for the run stage (e.g. 256m).

The run stage always executes with no network, no host environment, and a read-only root filesystem (invariant I4), regardless of these values.

data — data requirements

Field	Type	Notes
schema	string	Reference/description of the data schema required.
volume	string	Rough size class (e.g. <1GB, 1-100GB, >100GB).
sensitivity	enum	none | personal | special-category | secret.
synthetic_data	boolean	Whether usable synthetic/test data ships with the repo.

These fields are declarative in v1 and feed the gold tier (roadmap). They are recorded in the report so a reviewer sees them even before gold is enforced.

Example

name: Example PoC
licence: EUPL-1.2
owner: Example Municipality
contact: dev@example.gov
status: poc
deps:
  - fastapi
  - pydantic
deployment_target: docker-compose
data:
  schema: "OpenAPI 3 person record"
  volume: "<1GB"
  sensitivity: personal
  synthetic_data: true

Validation

estafette assess loads the manifest and validates it against the schema. Bronze criterion B5 requires the manifest to be present and valid; B6 requires contact/owner to be non-empty. Validation errors are reported as actionable gaps (invariant I3), never bare failures.