OpenRiC Specification — Changelog

Newest first. From the release after v0.43.14, bin/release writes each entry, with the line naming who approved it; see change control. The entries for v0.43.11 to v0.43.14 were backfilled from their tags on 2026-10-15.

v0.46.0 - 2026-10-15

Mapping follows RiC-AG with RiC-O 1.1 terms (open issue O-8 resolved); control areas and ISDF mapped; openricx:arrangement deprecated; external review brief

Migration: mapping rows that change what a server emits are ISAD(G) 3.3.1 (now rico:scopeAndContent; servers that sent openricx:description for it SHOULD send both until v0.47.0), 3.3.4 (rico:structure), 3.4.4 (rico:physicalCharacteristicsNote on the instantiation), 3.6.1 (rico:generalDescription), 3.7.2 (rico:isOrWasRegulatedBy) and 3.2.4 (acquisition as a rico:Activity). The reference service emitted only 3.3.1 and sends both forms since service v0.17.11.

Deprecated: openricx:arrangement, replaced by rico:structure.

Erratum (2026-10-15, after release): “until v0.47.0” above should read “until at least v0.48.0”. Change control keeps a deprecated item for at least one further minor release. See known issue K-4.

Approved by: Dr Johan Pieterse, 2026-10-15

v0.45.0 - 2026-10-15

Fixture provenance and licence labels; mapping compared row by row with RiC-AG (audit, open issue O-8); accruals mapped to rico:accruals and openricx:accrualsNote deprecated; write-body schemas for every entity type; probe covers round-trip editing for every entity type and relations

Deprecated: openricx:accrualsNote (added in v0.44.0, never emitted by any server) is replaced by RiC-O 1.1’s rico:accruals. No server or client change is needed.

Approved by: Dr Johan Pieterse, 2026-10-15

v0.44.1 - 2026-10-15

Demonstration uses an AI-generated 3D model on its own record; the Egyptian Boat’s non-commercial model is detached; drift log records service v0.17.8 verifying against spec v0.44.0

Approved by: Dr Johan Pieterse, 2026-10-15

v0.44.0 - 2026-10-15

Part I corrections: data-driven site and release manifest, status and versions pages, evidence labels; API contract (OpenAPI 3.1) checked in CI; crosswalk editions and change-control policy; openric: API vocabulary published; Core Discovery 0.4.0 list envelope; conformance probe gains round-trip editing and provenance and event checks; implementer quickstart

Migration: Core Discovery 0.3.0 to 0.4.0 is breaking for list responses. Servers send openric:total, openric:page, openric:limit and openric:items (integers and an array) and page by page and limit; offset is gone; the old ric:* keys may stay as aliases. Clients read the openric: keys. Full table: Core Discovery §9.

Approved by: Dr Johan Pieterse, 2026-10-15

v0.43.14 - 2026-10-14

Wizard no longer saves to the public reference service; help pages say every write needs a key.

Approved by: Dr Johan Pieterse, 2026-10-14 (release confirmation; entry backfilled 2026-10-15)

v0.43.13 - 2026-10-14

Version bump only: re-release of v0.43.12 with the same content and message. No other file changed.

Approved by: Dr Johan Pieterse, 2026-10-14 (release confirmation; entry backfilled 2026-10-15)

v0.43.12 - 2026-10-14

Profile inventory, schema and fixture counts render from _data/ and CI rejects hand-typed ones; a generated /status/ page with the conformance matrix; the /spec/versions/ page; page-kind banners; drift log and architecture page corrected.

Approved by: Dr Johan Pieterse, 2026-10-14 (release confirmation; entry backfilled 2026-10-15)

v0.43.11 - 2026-10-13

Sitemap, and spec pages say which release last revised them, so version headers no longer read as the current release; the drift check covers them. Also released in this tag: the shared presentation shell and task-first navigation (#10, #11), Browse as a catalogue (#12), wizard branching (#15), site-wide search (#17), “OpenRiC in five minutes”, three cross-cutting wizard scenarios, and the single version source with the drift guard and RiC baseline page.

Approved by: Dr Johan Pieterse, 2026-10-13 (release confirmation; entry backfilled 2026-10-15)

v0.43.1 - v0.43.10 - 2026-06-20 to 2026-06-22

Backfilled 2026-09-28. Ten patch releases shipped after v0.43.0 without changelog entries, which is why pages still quoting v0.37.0 went unnoticed for three months. Recorded here in groups.

Help diagrams (v0.43.1, v0.43.3, v0.43.4)

• Fixed Mermaid diagram collapse on /help/profiles-tree and /help/system-map, caused by svg-pan-zoom sizing.
• Renamed both pages from .html to .md so kramdown processes the body - headings, lists and links below the diagram were previously rendered as raw text.
• Added mobile pinch and pan zoom (Hammer.js plus an svg-pan-zoom touch handler), and fixed the dark code-block background bleeding onto pre.mermaid.

Demand-signal tracker and the Ask form (v0.43.5, v0.43.6, v0.43.7)

• New anonymous demand-signal tracker: a site beacon plus search and wizard events, with no personal data collected.
• New /ask question form, emailing the maintainer and storing every question so none is lost.
• New /stats admin dashboard, later gaining a one-click CSV export of usage and questions, and a per-day page-views chart.
• Wizard: made the scenario picker prominent, and added a step-level note callout carrying Record-vs-Record-Part guidance on the magnetic-tape scenario.

Typography (v0.43.8, v0.43.9, v0.43.10)

• Replaced em and en dashes with plain hyphens across every rendered page: 521 occurrences in the 19 spec base documents and profiles, then 583 more across 57 files site-wide, then the residual dash in the _config.yml meta description that appeared on every page.
• Repository metadata - this changelog, the README and CLAUDE.md - was deliberately left untouched at the time.

Note on tags. A stray v0.43.2 tag and release were created by an accidental second bin/release run and have been deleted; the empty commit fbf71a8 remains in linear history, untagged and harmless. The tag line is v0.43.0, v0.43.1, v0.43.3 onward.

v0.43.0 — 2026-06-19

Governance-line draft profiles (ported from the Heratio reference implementation)

Five proven-in-Heratio capabilities are specified as new draft OpenRiC profiles (ArchiveHeritageGroup/OpenRiC #1–#5):

• Governance (spec/profiles/governance.md) — pinned standards (RiC-O 1.0.2 · SKOS · PROV-O · CIDOC-CRM 7.1.3), the two-layer IRI policy (urn:ahg:ric:… internal / https://…/ric/… public export), the projection-manifest rule, deprecate-not-delete stable IRIs (owl:deprecated + dcterms:isReplacedBy, issue #3), SHACL as a merge gate, and the versioned change process.
• Portability (spec/profiles/portability.md) — the anti-lock-in guarantee: lossless JSON-LD/Turtle round-trip (proven by an automated test), a DCAT/VoID dataset descriptor (/dataset, schema schemas/dataset.schema.json) + /changelog, and an optional validate-on-export hook (?validate=1 → X-SHACL-Conformant).
• Inferred-Provenance (spec/profiles/inferred-provenance.md) — AI inference is never passed off as fact: machine-asserted entities/edges carry prov:wasGeneratedBy + openricx:assertionStatus/confidence/receipt; absence of provenance ⇒ asserted fact. New SHACL shape shapes/profiles/inferred-provenance.shacl.ttl. Ties the openric.org modelling-wizard AI surface into a normative provenance contract.
• Graph-Grounding (spec/profiles/graph-grounding.md) — read-only GET /ground so any agent/RAG disambiguates against the graph ({query, entities[], grounding_text}, schema schemas/ground.schema.json); vector↔graph join on the public entity IRI; flag-guarded, fail-open.

Also: registered the profiles (plus the previously-shipped SPARQL Access) in spec/profiles/index.md. Seven profiles normative, five draft.

Help centre (/help)

A full, searchable help centre at openric.org/help — the same two-door (archivist / technical) spirit as the redesigned home, now with sample-rich how-tos:

• 17 articles (_help/*.md) across eight categories — Getting started, The model, Using the API, The clients, Conformance & profiles, For institutions, For developers, Reference — each with copy-paste samples (curl, JSON-LD, SPARQL, OAI-PMH, the conformance probe).
• Client-side search powered by a vendored lunr.js index built at site-build time (help/search-index.json), with an instant dropdown on the help home and a dedicated /help/search/ page (assets/js/help-search.js, assets/js/lunr.min.js).
• Two interactive diagrams — a clickable system map (/help/system-map/) and a profiles tree (/help/profiles-tree/), rendered with Mermaid + svg-pan-zoom and drill-down links into the spec.
• New help Jekyll collection (/help/:name/), _layouts/help.html (sidebar + TOC), and a Help link in the site nav.
• bin/check-links.py now resolves the help collection permalinks (no false positives on inter-article links).

v0.38.3 — 2026-05-25

Conformance probe: SPARQL probes hardened + /sparql/info added

Two corrections to the SPARQL Access section of conformance/probe.sh:

1. URL-encode the SPARQL query body. The previous /sparql probe URL contained raw {, ?, } characters in the query value (?query=SELECT * WHERE { ?s ?p ?o } LIMIT 1). curl was treating {...} as a glob/brace expansion and ? as a query-string delimiter, so the URL was being mangled before transmission. The probe was passing only by accident — against the previous OpenRiC reference implementation, which masked all Fuseki errors as HTTP 200 with a wrapped JSON envelope. A server that correctly returns 4xx on backend parse failures (as the spec requires per Core Discovery §4) was being flagged non-conformant by the previous probe. Fixed by piping the query through jq -sRr @uri before interpolation.
2. Assert canonical SPARQL Results JSON shape. The predicate was a bare . (any non-null JSON), which silently accepted a server returning {"sparql": "...", "results": {...}} (non-canonical wrapper) as conformant. New predicate (.head.vars | type) == "array" requires the canonical application/sparql-results+json shape per the SPARQL 1.1 Protocol.
3. Add /sparql/info probe. Tests the void:Dataset description endpoint required by sparql-access profile §2.1. Optional, since the profile is itself optional.

Reference server (ric.theahg.co.za, OpenRiC service v0.10.0) passes 30/30 probes after this patch. Servers that previously claimed sparql-access conformance without exposing canonical SPARQL Results JSON will need to fix their endpoint to remain conformant.

No spec prose changes; no profile claim changes.

v0.38.2 — 2026-05-25

Conformance probe: detail-endpoint coverage for all 8 entity types

conformance/probe.sh previously ran probe_show_first (detail-show) for only records / agents / repositories. The other 5 entity types (places / rules / activities / instantiations / functions) were list-only, which let the v0.9.0-introduced regression on /functions/{id} stay hidden for 35 days until the reference service’s v0.9.2 audit caught it.

This patch adds detail-show probes for the missing 5 types. Probe surface goes from 24 → 29 checks. The reference service at ric.theahg.co.za/api/ric/v1 passes all 29.

Any conformant OpenRiC implementation should pass the expanded probe; if a previously-passing server starts failing, it is a real regression (not a probe artifact). No spec prose, no profile claims, no SHACL shapes changed.

v0.38.1 — 2026-05-25

Doc-only patch: RiC-AG cross-reference + RiC-CM Nav declaration

Two drift-log.md open items resolved; both are pure-documentation changes — no normative property mapping or profile claim changes.

RiC-AG (Application Guidelines) — cross-referenced

• spec/mapping.md §1.2 (new) declares RiC-AG v0.1 (ICA-EGAD, October 2025) as the upstream authoritative reference for the legacy-ICA-standards-to-RiC-CM crosswalk. OpenRiC defers to RiC-AG where the two agree; intentional divergences (the openricx: extension namespace minted where neither RiC-O 1.1 nor RiC-AG covers a concept) are documented and tracked as upstream-proposal candidates. The forthcoming EAC-CPF → RiC-O 1.1 mapping (announced under RiC-AG) is flagged for cross-reference from §6.2 (Actor) when it lands.
• related-implementations.md promotes RiC-AG from a passing-mention under the ICA-EGAD section to a first-class section of its own (sibling to Garance, RiC-O Converter, etc.), with explicit “why OpenRiC tracks it” / “how OpenRiC uses it” / “what OpenRiC does NOT do” structure consistent with the other entries.
• drift-log.md records the promotion as a Closed item.

RiC-CM navigator reconciliation — declared (option C)

• The open question of how OpenRiC’s /reference/ric-cm/ browser relates to the Damigos / Ionian RiC-CM Nav is resolved by articulating the distinction, not deprecating either.
• OpenRiC’s navigator: versioned, SPARQL-backed, declared-vs-inherited separation, tied to spec releases — a spec-reference browser. Ionian RiC-CM Nav: standalone single-page graph navigator for conceptual exploration. The two address different reader needs and are formally declared as complementary, not competing on related-implementations.md.
• drift-log.md moves the item from “Open” to “Closed (recent)”.

v0.38.0 — 2026-04-25

Wave B — outreach prep + SPARQL Access maturity step + extension proposals

Triggered by the v2 outstanding-work review (openric_outstanding_deep_review_v2.md) which flagged: zero progress on the v1.0 governance gates (second implementation, external institution commitment, non-maintainer contributors), the SPARQL Access Draft profile lacking SHACL + fixtures, and three concrete upstream-proposal candidates ready to file at ICA-EGAD/RiC-O.

SPARQL Access (Draft) — promotion-blocker artifacts shipped

• New shapes/profiles/sparql-access.shacl.ttl — :SparqlInfoShape (validates void:Dataset description per profile §4.3) + :SparqlConstructShape (documents the JSON-LD @context-binding contract for CONSTRUCT/DESCRIBE results). Closes 1 of 5 conditions for promoting sparql-access from Draft to Normative (see spec/profiles/sparql-access.md §9 Q5).
• New fixture fixtures/sparql-info/expected.jsonld + notes.md — minimum-viable void:Dataset description with required void:sparqlEndpoint, void:triples, void:vocabulary (binding rico:), recommended dcterms:license, plus implementation hints (openricx:accessPolicy, openricx:rateLimit, openricx:maxQueryTimeSeconds, openricx:exampleQueriesUrl).
• New fixture fixtures/sparql-construct/expected.jsonld + notes.md — pins the JSON-LD shape for Accept: application/ld+json CONSTRUCT/DESCRIBE results, with @context binding rico + openricx + skos + dcterms + owl + xsd, and an @graph array of two interlinked subjects (Person + RecordSet). Closes 1 of 5 conditions per the same Q5 list.

Related Implementations expanded

• New sections in related-implementations.md: Sparna (Garance build team, RiC-O Converter maintainers), Sparnatural (visual SPARQL query builder), RiC-O Converter v3.0 (canonical EAD/EAC-CPF → RiC-O converter, alignment statement), Damigos / Ionian University (RiC-CM Nav + Corfu Criminal Court Archives + 2023 ICADL CIDOC-CRM mapping).
• Watch-list table for ResearchSpace (Baptiste de Coulon / SAPA), Holocaust Archival KG, Min-ji Kim (art records), Arian Rajh (description-logic critical work), Richard Williamson (draw.io shapes), EGAD’s “Learn About RiC” webinar series.

Drift log additions

• New entry: RiC-CM navigator reconciliation — OpenRiC’s RiC-CM browser at ric.theahg.co.za/reference/ric-cm/ parallels Damigos’s RiC-CM Nav. Three resolution options laid out (deprecate ours / contribute to theirs / articulate distinct purposes); resolution gate is post-v0.38, before v1.0 freeze.
• New entry: External-extension watch (RiC-O 1.1 ecosystem) — track AnF’s RiC-O extension publication at github.com/ArchivesNationalesFR/ontology (v1.0 due ~June 2026); audit openricx: against it on landing.
• New entry: Phase numbering reconciliation — internal “Phases 1-7 by feature area” framing is OUT OF DATE relative to the public spec-version roadmap. Internal docs being updated.

Upstream-proposal templates — three paste-ready GitHub-issue bodies in new docs/upstream-proposals/ directory, ready for the maintainer to file against ICA-EGAD/RiC-O:

• hasAppraisalInformation.md — datatype property on RecordResource for ISAD(G) 3.3.2 appraisal/destruction/scheduling.
• containsPersonalData.md — xsd:boolean privacy-compliance flag on RecordResource.
• ContactPoint.md — rico:ContactPoint class + 6 address/contact properties for ISDIAH repository contacts.

Each draft includes rationale, suggested IRI, suggested domain/range, alternatives considered, cross-walks to source standards, and OpenRiC’s interim placement.

Outreach drafts — two paste-ready email/discussion bodies in new docs/outreach/ directory:

• sparna-second-implementation.md — Sparna sanity-check on SPARQL Access profile + open the door to Garance v2 being a second implementation. Pre-send checklist included; gated on this v0.38.0 release going to origin.
• damigos-second-implementation.md — Damigos / Ionian University on (a) Corfu Criminal Court Archives running our conformance probe, (b) reconciling the two RiC-CM navigators, (c) co-authorship on OpenRiC-CIDOC-Bridge extension.

Extension proposals (post-v1.0) — new docs/extensions/ directory with strawman drafts:

• openric-cidoc-bridge.md — express RiC-O graphs in CIDOC-CRM-equivalent form for museum interoperability. Built explicitly on Damigos’s 2023 ICADL paper. Co-authorship with the Ionian group is a question the outreach asks. Five open questions documented (co-authorship, endpoint pattern, SHACL coverage, bidirectionality, Linked.Art alignment). Post-v1.0, alongside OpenRiC-Rights and OpenRiC-Preservation.

Mapping spec — RiC-O Converter alignment

• spec/mapping.md §1.1 (new) — OpenRiC mapping is consistent with RiC-O Converter v3.0 conventions. Differences documented: source-standard coverage (Converter does EAD/EAC-CPF, OpenRiC does ISAD(G)/ISAAR(CPF)/ISDIAH/ISDF), output RiC-O version (both 1.1), property-choice consistency for the overlap subset, OpenRiC’s openricx: extension namespace where neither the Converter nor RiC-O 1.1 covers a needed concept.

No spec-semantics changes. No rico:* term renames, no SHACL constraint changes, no fixture rewrites of existing fixtures. v0.38.0 is purely additive — new artifacts, new docs, no breaking changes to v0.37.1 conformance.

v0.37.1 — 2026-04-25

Public consistency patch

Triggered by an external “outstanding work” review (openric_outstanding_deep_review_v2.md) that flagged drift between the v0.37.0 landing claim and several supporting pages. The review’s namespace claims (still uses rico:DateRange etc.) were verified as stale reads — the live site already reflects v0.37.0 — but the reviewer correctly caught presentation-level drift:

• Per-document version headers in spec/mapping.md, spec/viewing-api.md, spec/graph-primitives.md, spec/conformance.md bumped from 0.1.0-draft to 0.37.0 with Status: Active — RiC-O 1.1 namespace remediation complete.
• README.md current-version banner updated from v0.36.1 to v0.37.0; service-table cell flagged “currently tracking spec v0.36.0 (Phase G migration to v0.37.0 in progress)”.
• Mapping spec’s stale “⚠️ Under RiC-O 1.1 conformance review” callout replaced with a “✅ REMEDIATION COMPLETE” callout pointing readers at the audit doc.
• Audit document opens with a prominent STATUS — REMEDIATION COMPLETE banner so casual readers do not misread the historical “110 of 168 missing” finding as the current state.
• New /drift-log.html page — public list of known service-side / viewer / capture / conformance-probe drift items against the v0.37.0 spec, with ETAs or blocker explanations. Service Phase G migration items enumerated.

No spec semantics changed.

v0.37.0 — 2026-04-25

RiC-O 1.1 namespace remediation (Phases A → E) + drift cleanups + Garance-aligned additions

This is the largest single release since the v0.30.0 → v0.36.0 profile-freeze series. It closes the RiC-O 1.1 conformance audit (110 missing terms → 0 genuine emitted-context violations) and adds the linked-data publication infrastructure flagged by external review (Florence Clavaud / Garance / KM RiC user-group thread).

Namespace remediation — five phases applied:

• Phase A (already shipped 2026-04-24, commit 47c6581): version strings RiC-O 1.0 → 1.1, audit doc published.
• Phase B: 20 high-confidence pure RENAMEs + 3 cross-namespace RENAMEs (Vocabulary→skos:ConceptScheme, hasBroaderConcept→skos:broader, conformsTo→dcterms:conformsTo) + 2 DROPs (placeholder/marker terms). 129 occurrences across 38 files. Result: 110 → 86 missing.
• Phase C: extension namespace openricx: <https://openric.org/ns/ext/v1#> declared in mapping.md, 5 SHACL shape files, and 14 JSON-LD fixture @context blocks. All 46 EXTENSION rows renamed (rico:X → openricx:X), 244 occurrences. Result: 86 → 39 missing.
• Phase D (8 sub-phases): mechanical RENAMEs against verified canonical 1.1 targets (incl. hasAgentName→hasOrHadAgentName, hasPlaceName→hasOrHadPlaceName); Holder/Location family rename without data-flips; Activity+hasActivityType remodel of Production/Accumulation/CustodyEvent/Transfer/ProductionActivity classes (single canonical rico:Activity class with new vocab IRIs at <https://openric.org/vocab/activity-type/> — directly endorsed by Florence Clavaud, RiC user group thread #27); Rule-regulation remodel; provenance pattern (hasAcquisitionProvenance / wasAcquiredFrom → hasOrganicProvenance); Function class → openricx:Function interim with §6.4 documenting canonical alternatives; hasPlace → isAssociatedWithPlace; openricx:hasFindingAid → rico:isOrWasDescribedBy + rico:hasDocumentaryFormType <…#FindingAid> per Florence Clavaud KM thread #1; held rico:hasSource → dcterms:source; mapping.md §6.2 extended with mechanism → rico:Mechanism and new §10 “Systems, APIs, and Mechanisms” section endorsed by Florence (KM #27 — “scanner or digital camera”) and the Garance review (§10.8). Result: 39 → 10 missing.
• Phase E: low-confidence remodels — hasOccupation → openricx:hasOccupation SKOS pattern (per Aaron Hope + Florence KM #20, OccupationType is an ActivityType subclass); hasReasonForExecution → rico:authorizingMandate; isOrWasControlledBy → rico:hasOrHadController; rico:value → openricx:checksumValue. Result: 10 → 7 remaining tokens, all confirmed false positives (intentional documentation prose in “MUST NOT emit X” warnings). Zero genuine emitted-context uses of unsupported rico:* terms remain.

Pre-A drift cleanups (from external review P1/P2):

• Pagination envelope policy (viewing-api.md §8.5): one canonical envelope per endpoint class (JSON-LD lists use openric:total/page/limit/items with @context; plain JSON convenience endpoints use total/items without @context).
• Node.type CURIE policy (viewing-api.md §8.6): graph and list responses use prefixed CURIEs (rico:Person), not bare local names. 47 fixture / spec rewrites.
• OpenAPI version consistent at 3.0 (was 3.1 in viewing-api.md only).
• Legacy L1-L4 conformance levels marked as legacy in conformance.md and viewing-api.md; current claims are profile-based.
• Round-Trip audit visibility softened (round-trip-editing.md §2.3): minimal fields public by default; richer fields (actor, IP, payload) operator-gated per published visibility table — addresses POPIA/GDPR concerns flagged in external review.
• Version matrix published in spec/index.md; landing-page hero updated from v0.2.0 to v0.37.0.

Linked-data publication additions (from Garance review, ICA-EGAD-aligned):

• openricx ontology — Turtle ontology stub at /ns/ext/v1.ttl declaring all 48 openricx terms (13 classes + 35 properties), plus an HTML index. Closes the audit’s v1.0 reviewer-checklist row “Extension namespace exists — dereferences to human and machine documentation.”
• OpenRiC vocabularies — SKOS ConceptSchemes published for activity-type (6 concepts) and rule-type (8 concepts) at /vocab/activity-type/ and /vocab/rule-type/, with HTML and Turtle representations.
• Semantic URIs vs API endpoints (viewing-api.md §3.1) — recommended /id/{kind}/{id} semantic URI pattern separate from /api/ric/v1/... endpoints, with the linked-data identity layer documented.
• Content negotiation policy (viewing-api.md §3.2) — HTML / JSON-LD / Turtle / RDF/XML negotiation table, Vary: Accept mandate.
• Related Implementations page — Garance, ICA-EGAD RiC-O, and Heratio listed as external reference projects with permitted-use guidance and attribution requirements.
• SPARQL Access Profile (Draft) — 8th profile drafted as an optional, read-only SPARQL 1.1 query surface for RDF-backed implementations. Status: Draft pending implementer feedback + SHACL shapes + fixtures.

Notes:

• The OpenRiC reference service (ric.theahg.co.za) implements the seven Normative profiles. Implementing the new SPARQL Access Draft profile, content-negotiation extensions, and the /id/... semantic URI layer requires service-side work — Phase G in the project plan.
• The openricx: ontology and the vocabularies under /vocab/ are dereferenceable as static files (Turtle + HTML) once the GitHub Pages build picks up this commit. Implementations MAY use the URIs immediately; the ontology stub is normative for openricx:* term semantics.
• ICA-EGAD upstream-proposal candidates remain open: ContactPoint, hasAppraisalInformation, containsPersonalData. Tracking via audit §F.

v0.36.1 — 2026-04-21

SPARQL positioned; triplestore-choice guide added

• spec/viewing-api.md §4.8 reframed from “experimental — deferred” to “non-normative — outside the OpenRiC contract, by design”. Implementations MAY expose a SPARQL endpoint at any implementation-specific path; the OpenRiC contract does not test it, clients should not assume its presence, and no profile can be satisfied by exposing only a SPARQL endpoint. Door is left open for a future sparql-query profile if concrete demand surfaces. For the common graph-walk case /graph?uri=…&depth=N remains the stable, SHACL-validated, bounded alternative.
• New guide: guides/triplestore-choice.md. Walks implementers through backing-store options — Apache Jena Fuseki (the reference choice), Oxigraph, GraphDB, Virtuoso Open Source, QLever, Blazegraph (now effectively unmaintained), Amazon Neptune. Scale bands (triple-count vs store), performance notes, when Fuseki gets slow and what to migrate to, dump/load migration recipe, and the reference deployment’s actual numbers. Also listed on guides/index.md.

v0.36.0 — 2026-04-21

Export-Only profile — profile matrix complete (7/7 normative)

• Export-Only (new, 259 lines). Mandates OAI-PMH v2.0 at /oai (six verbs; oai_dc + rico_ld prefixes, the latter carrying CDATA-wrapped RiC-O JSON-LD for full-semantics harvest) plus content-negotiated per-record dumps at /records/{slug}/export (JSON-LD default, Turtle and RDF-XML alternatives — lossless triple-set parity MUST hold across the three).
• shapes/profiles/export-only.shacl.ttl (new, thin — OAI-PMH XML validates against OAI-PMH.xsd, not SHACL). Covers only the JSON-LD dump envelope.
• 3 new fixtures: oai-identify, oai-list-metadata-formats, record-export-jsonld (43 total in manifest).
• All 5 design questions resolved on-page; Q1 (OAI-PMH mandatory) and Q2 (CDATA-JSON-LD vs bespoke RiC-XML namespace) are the consequential ones.
• Seven profiles are now normative: Core Discovery, Authority & Context, Graph Traversal, Digital Object Linkage, Round-Trip Editing, Provenance & Event, Export-Only. Subsequent path to v1.0 is governance-bound (second implementation, institution commitment, external contributors) rather than spec-drafting.

v0.35.0 — 2026-04-21

Provenance & Event profile + freeze-series renumber

• Provenance & Event (new, 235 lines). Tightens Authority & Context’s Activity shapes: rico:Activity MUST carry rico:resultsOrResultedIn + rico:hasOrHadParticipant + rico:isAssociatedWithDate at Violation severity (was Warning); cross-entity link targets MUST be the correct RiC-O class via new :ParticipantTypeShape + :ResultTypeShape.
• shapes/profiles/provenance-event.shacl.ttl (new, 5 shapes). 2 new fixtures: activity-production-full, activity-custody.
• Q5 is the honest one: this is the first profile where the reference server’s serializer didn’t yet emit the required shape at freeze time. Gap closed in service v0.8.13; data backfill still pending for full conformance claim.
• Renumber catch-up. The freeze series was initially cut as v0.3.0 through v0.8.0, which silently collided with pre-freeze draft tags that already existed under those names. This release renumbers the series to continue the real tag history (v0.29.0 → v0.30.0 → … → v0.36.0). Profile versions (per-profile lifecycle, see core-discovery.md §10 Q8) remain independent of spec version.

v0.34.0 — 2026-04-21

Round-Trip Editing profile

• Round-Trip Editing (new, 268 lines). Full write surface — POST / PATCH / DELETE on every RiC entity type + relations, gated by API-key scopes (write, delete), with a public per-entity audit trail at GET /{type}/{id}/revisions.
• shapes/profiles/round-trip-editing.shacl.ttl (new, 3 shapes focusing on the openric:RevisionList envelope — write/create/success envelopes are pure JSON, validated by JSON Schema at /schemas/write-response.schema.json, not SHACL). 2 new fixtures: write-response-success, revision-list.
• 6 design questions resolved: JSON (not JSON-LD) for the envelopes (Q1); optimistic concurrency deferred to v1+ (Q2); audit reads public with write-time redaction (Q3); deep pagination out of scope (Q4); coarse write/delete scopes only (Q5); PUT treated as PATCH alias to prevent data-loss-by-omission (Q6).

v0.33.0 — 2026-04-21

Digital Object Linkage profile

• Digital Object Linkage (new, 284 lines). Covers rico:Instantiation (MIME, checksums via rico:technicalCharacteristics, extent, record-backlinks) and openricx:Function (ISDF business functions) as first-class entities. Optional POST /upload + GET /thumbnail/{id} endpoints are ergonomic extensions; not required for profile claim.
• Pre-existing shapes/profiles/digital-object-linkage.shacl.ttl (2 shapes: :InstantiationShape, :FunctionShape) now normative. 2 shipped fixtures: instantiation-tiff, instantiation-application.
• Q1 resolved the long-standing taxonomy question: openricx:Function stays in Digital Object Linkage (historical grouping) rather than being re-homed to Authority & Context.

v0.32.0 — 2026-04-21

Graph Traversal profile + “six profiles” → “seven profiles” correction

• Graph Traversal (new, 296 lines). Normative spec for /graph?uri=&depth=N (returns openric:Subgraph per the Graph Primitives vocabulary), /relations, /relations-for/{id}, /hierarchy/{id}. Depth capped at 3 (Q1). Hierarchy + relations endpoints use REST-style {data, pagination} envelopes rather than JSON-LD (Q3) — mirrors IIIF Image API’s split.
• Pre-existing shapes/profiles/graph-traversal.shacl.ttl (6 shapes, 2 property-shape + 4 SPARQL) now normative. Shipped fixtures: subgraph-depth-1, subgraph-depth-2, hierarchy-with-children, relation-list, relations-for-place.
• Seven-profile-count correction. manifest.schema.json has always declared 7 profile IDs, but several narrative docs said “six profiles”. Fixed in spec/profiles/index.md, profiles.md, faq.md (×2), data-management.md, and core-discovery.md’s conformance-claim examples. Profile count is now consistent across the corpus.

v0.31.0 — 2026-04-21

Authority & Context profile

• Authority & Context (new, 298 lines). First-class rico:Place, rico:Rule, and rico:Activity (plus concrete subclasses rico:Activity, rico:Activity) with reconciliation-friendly identifiers via owl:sameAs.
• Pre-existing shapes/profiles/authority-context.shacl.ttl (6 shapes) now normative. 6 shipped fixtures: place-country, place-with-parent, place-list, rule-law, activity-production, activity-accumulation.
• Orthogonal to Core Discovery. 4 design questions resolved: hierarchy shape via rico:isOrWasPartOf stubs (Q1); owl:sameAs SHOULD not MUST (Q3); Activity subclass selection mandatory when data supports it (Q4); rule-type vocabulary open with 5 conventional values RECOMMENDED (Q5).

v0.30.0 — 2026-04-21

Core Discovery profile — first normative freeze

• Core Discovery flipped Status: Draft — open for comment → Status: Normative. All 7 design questions (Q1, Q3–Q8) now resolved.
• Q6 resolved: RFC 7807 Problem Details envelope is normative — errors MUST be application/problem+json with five required base fields (type, title, status, detail, instance) and extra-field tolerance. New §4.1: table of the 9 registered error-type URIs under https://openric.org/errors/. Reference server migrated in openric/service v0.8.11.
• ContactPoint shape pinned: rico:ContactPoint chosen over schema:ContactPoint (§3.4.1). New :ContactPointShape in shapes/profiles/core-discovery.shacl.ttl; :RepositoryShape now links to it via sh:node.
• §10 renamed from “Open design questions” to “Design decisions”; all 7 resolutions labelled “Resolution” (not “Draft resolution”).

v0.29.0 — 2026-04-21

Reference-server additions rolled forward from post-v0.2.0 Unreleased

• openric.org/demo/browse/ — responsive card-grid browse over any OpenRiC-conformant server. Per-type filter tabs (Records / Agents / Places / Rules / Activities / Instantiations / Repositories / Functions), pagination, click-through to the 2D/3D viewer, openric-demo callouts when a seeded fonds is present. Pure browser, no build step.
• Repository + Function write endpoints. Full CRUD on all eight RiC entity classes; 46 paths in openapi.json.
• openric:rebuild-nested-set Artisan command with --verify and --dry-run — rebuilds information_object MPTT lft/rgt after bulk imports.
• openric:seed-demo Artisan command — creates a coherent mini-fonds (Repository + Agent + Place + Activity + Rule + Function + 3 Records + Instantiation + 11 relations) so the browse demo has a curated narrative. Idempotent; --drop removes.
• SPARQL marked experimental in §4.8 of the Viewing API spec. The endpoint remains a stub; clients should use /graph?uri=…&depth=N for traversal.
• Conformance probe now supports READ_KEY= for scope-enforcement checks (asserts a read-only key gets 403 on write routes).
• Three 404s in v0.28.3 live-linking fixed: www.ica.org/...RiC-CM_1-0.pdf (URL moved on ICA; swapped to the current /app/uploads/2023/12/RiC-CM-1.0.pdf); openric.org/fixtures/activity-production/ and .../agent-person-simple/ (Jekyll index pages added).

v0.2.0 — 2026-04-18

Second freeze of the OpenRiC specification. All changes below are live on the reference infrastructure at ric.theahg.co.za and have been verified with the conformance probe.

New public surfaces

• capture.openric.org — pure-browser data-entry client (github.com/openric/capture, AGPL-3.0). Paste a server URL + API key, create Places, Rules, Activities, Instantiations, and relations against any OpenRiC-conformant backend. Mirror of the viewer’s decoupling story on the capture side.
• ric.theahg.co.za/api/ric/v1 — the reference API moved to its own deployment. Heratio stopped serving /api/ric/v1/* and is now a client of this endpoint over HTTP, same surface any third-party client uses. No privileged shortcut.

Specification additions (pending a v0.2.0 freeze)

The following endpoints were added to the Viewing API document (§4.11–4.18). They are live on the reference deployment but not yet part of a frozen tag:

Read-side (no new auth required):

• GET /places, /places/{id}, /places/flat?exclude_id= — RiC-native Places with list + show + picker helper.
• GET /rules, /rules/{id} — RiC-native Rules.
• GET /activities, /activities/{id} — RiC-native Activities.
• GET /instantiations, /instantiations/{id} — RiC-native Instantiations.
• GET /relations — paginated global list; GET /relations-for/{id} — relations for one entity grouped by direction; GET /relation-types — filtered relation predicate catalog.
• GET /hierarchy/{entity-id}?include=parent,children,siblings — hierarchy walk.
• GET /autocomplete?q=&types=&limit= — cross-entity label search.
• GET /vocabulary/{taxonomy} — single-taxonomy detail (complements the all-taxonomies catalog at /vocabulary).
• GET /records/{id}/entities?types= — linked RiC entities aggregate for one record.
• GET /entities/{id}/info — minimal info card for popovers.

Write-side (new — requires X-API-Key + write / delete scopes):

• POST /{type}, PATCH /{type}/{id}, DELETE /{type}/{id} for {type} ∈ places|rules|activities|instantiations.
• POST /agents, PATCH /agents/{id}, DELETE /agents/{id} — rico:Agent / Person / CorporateBody / Family (ISAAR-CPF).
• POST /records, PATCH /records/{id}, DELETE /records/{id} — rico:Record / RecordSet (ISAD).
• POST /relations, PATCH /relations/{id}, DELETE /relations/{id}.
• POST /upload — multipart file upload; returns {id, url, mime, size, filename} with a publicly-fetchable URL under /uploads/.
• DELETE /entities/{id} — type-agnostic delete-by-id for UIs that hold an id without a type.

Harvesting — OAI-PMH v2.0

• GET /oai?verb=... — standard OAI-PMH endpoint over information_object records.
• Six verbs: Identify, ListMetadataFormats, ListSets, ListIdentifiers, ListRecords, GetRecord.
• Two metadata prefixes: oai_dc (Dublin Core — title/identifier/description/date/type) and rico_ld (RiC-O JSON-LD wrapped in CDATA for harvesters that want the full graph).
• Sets are derived from the hierarchy: each top-level (parent_id IS NULL) record becomes a fonds:N set.
• Resumption tokens are opaque base64(JSON) and carry the prefix, offset, set, from, until filters.

Conformance suite

• conformance/probe.sh — black-box probe that hits every documented endpoint and verifies shape via jq. Takes a BASE env var for any OpenRiC-conformant server. Optional KEY enables write-side probes. Exits non-zero if any required endpoint fails.
• conformance/README.md — what it does and how to run it in CI.
• conformance/.github-workflows-conformance.yml — copy-paste GitHub Actions workflow for weekly + push-triggered conformance runs.

API Explorer

• openric.org/api-explorer/ — interactive Swagger UI page. Point it at any OpenRiC server (default: reference). Loads the server’s /openapi.json, renders all ~40 endpoints grouped by tag, and lets you “Try it out” with your own API key (key stays in localStorage, never leaves your browser).
• GET /api/ric/v1/openapi.json — every OpenRiC server now ships a live OpenAPI 3.0 spec with full request/response schemas for Agents, Records, Places, Rules, Activities, Instantiations, Relations, Graph, SPARQL, Uploads, OAI-PMH, and Validation. Previously this endpoint returned an empty stub.
• GET /api/ric/v1/docs — per-server embedded Swagger UI. Bookmark this on your own deployment for the canonical test console.

Graph endpoint additions

• /graph?uri=/default/term/{id} and /default/thing/{id}, /default/concept/{id}, /default/subject/{id} — the subgraph root dispatcher now recognises Term/Thing/Concept/Subject entity URIs, so clicking a subject node in the viewer drills into the records tagged with it. rico:hasBroaderConcept + rico:hasOrHadSubject edges.

Auth

§6 of the Viewing API spec is revised. Reads stay public by default; writes require an API key with an appropriate scope. Three scopes defined: write, delete, and implicit read. 401 on missing key, 403 on missing scope.

CORS

§5.3 extended: write endpoints MUST handle the OPTIONS preflight and return the standard CORS headers. Without this, browser-based capture clients can’t write.

Tooling

• @openric/viewer@0.1.1 — fixes fetchSubgraph to accept relative server bases. Adds rich hover tooltip (RiC-O type, full URI, per-node extras). Published on npm.
• Reference deployment runbook (ric-split-runbook.md) + collapse plan (ric-split-collapse-plan.md) published in the Heratio repository. They’re the implementation playbook for anyone wanting to reproduce the “reference impl is a consumer of its own API” topology.

Fixtures / validator

No changes yet — the 20-case fixture pack and the validator CLI still target v0.1.0 endpoint shapes. Adding fixtures for the new read endpoints + the write surface is the blocker for a v0.2.0 tag.

v0.1.0 — 2026-04-17 (first frozen draft)

First frozen release of OpenRiC. The specification is draft-stable: implementations can now claim conformance against a specific version. Breaking changes are allowed in v0.2.x in response to external review, but any such change will bump the minor version.

Four specification documents

Published at openric.org:

• Mapping Specification — how archival descriptions (ISAD(G), ISAAR(CPF), ISDIAH) map to RiC-CM / RiC-O. Complete class and property tables.
• Viewing API — REST + JSON-LD contract for serving RiC data. 10 endpoints defined.
• Graph Primitives — abstract viewing model with five primitives (Subgraph, Node, Edge, Cluster, LayoutHint) and six invariants.
• Conformance — four levels (L1–L4), SHACL shapes, JSON Schemas, fixture pack, validator CLI.

Machine-checkable artifacts

• 12 JSON Schemas (Draft 2020-12) — record, agent, repository, place, instantiation, activity, rule, subgraph, vocabulary, error, list, service-description.
• 2 SHACL shape files — openric.shacl.ttl (single-document validation; 254 triples) and full-graph.shacl.ttl (triple-store-wide checks; 31 triples).
• 20 canonical fixtures covering every supported entity type, list responses, multilingual content, subgraph depth 1 & 2, error responses, and service-description.
• openric-validate CLI — Python 3.11+, installable via pip install -e ./validator or eventually pipx install openric-validate. Runs JSON Schema validation + SHACL shape validation + graph invariant checks.

Reference implementation

Heratio is the first reference implementation and live-validated against these artifacts. Eight endpoint types pass schema + shape validation:

• /records/{slug} — fonds, series, files, items
• /agents/{slug} — Person, CorporateBody, Family
• /repositories/{slug} — ISDIAH repositories
• /places/{id} — RiC-native Places with coordinates + authority URIs
• /instantiations/{id} — digital/physical manifestations
• /activities/{id} — Production / Accumulation / Activity
• /rules/{id} — mandates, laws, policies
• /graph?uri=…&depth=N — full OpenRiC Subgraph envelope

All graph edges emit canonical rico:* predicates; 2,000+ RiC entities are currently served.

Licensing

• Specification (mapping / viewing-api / graph-primitives / conformance, schemas, SHACL shapes, fixtures): CC-BY 4.0
• Validator CLI (validator/): AGPL-3.0-or-later

CI

GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/ci.yml) runs on every push and PR:

1. Validator unit + fixture tests (pytest)
2. JSON Schema 2020-12 well-formedness
3. SHACL Turtle parse check
4. Markdown internal-link check

Contributors

• Johan Pieterse (Plain Sailing Information Systems, The Archive and Heritage Group) — spec drafting, reference implementation, validator
• Richard — IIIF-analogy feedback that reframed OpenRiC from product feature to neutral specification

What’s next (roadmap for v0.2.x)

• External review from EGAD-adjacent spec editors
• At least one non-Heratio reference implementation
• @openric/viewer npm package extraction
• OpenRiC-Rights (ODRL-backed rights enforcement) — separate spec
• OpenRiC-Preservation (PREMIS-equivalent event vocabulary) — separate spec
• L4 full conformance testing with round-trip preservation

v0.1.0 is a draft freeze. If you plan to implement against it, please open an issue on GitHub so we know who’s implementing and can coordinate breaking changes in v0.2.x.