Describes the current state. Live figures are on current status.

OpenRiC Drift Log

A public log of known drift between the OpenRiC specification and its public surfaces (reference API, viewer, capture client, OpenAPI metadata, conformance probe). Updated as items land or are resolved.

This page exists because the spec moves faster than the supporting implementations, and external reviewers need a single place to see which gaps are known, where they are, and what’s planned. It is not a defect tracker - it tracks deliberate lag between the spec and downstream systems.

Last updated: 2026-10-19. For the live figures behind this page, see current status.

Open drift items

Reference API (`ric.theahg.co.za`) lag against the specification

Re-checked item by item on 2026-10-15 against the live service (tag v0.17.12, then v0.17.13). It verifies against spec v0.46.0 and declares seven profiles: six normative ones in full and SPARQL Access as a draft. Every row of the April 2026 migration list that is resolved has moved to Closed with what was checked. These rows remain open:

Item	Currently emits	Target	Blocker
Provenance & Event profile claim	Not claimed. The daily probe (15 October) finds the production activities carry their results and participants but no date (`openricx:DateRange`, §6.2 and §6.4). The serializer emits a date whenever the activity row has one. A count on 16 October found 40 undated activities (38 production, 1 accumulation, 1 untyped), and for none of them does the record’s creation or accumulation event, or the event the activity was seeded from, carry a date. There is no source to take a date from, and dates will not be invented for demonstration data.	Claimed by a server whose activities are dated	Dated demonstration data, for example a new demonstration dataset for the reference service (known issue K-10).

External-extension watch (RiC-O 1.1 ecosystem)

Item	Issue	Plan
AnF RiC-O extension	Archives nationales de France publishes a RiC-O 1.1 ontology extension, `AnF-ontology_v1.rdf`, at `github.com/ArchivesNationalesFR/ontology`; the file has been in the repository since August 2025 and was last changed on 12 October 2026, with no tagged release. It may overlap with `openricx:` for agent description, addresses and places.	Audit `openricx:` against `AnF-ontology_v1.rdf`. Where they overlap, propose alignment or a cross-reference rather than parallel definitions. Not yet done.
OpenRiC vocabularies (`/vocab/activity-type/`, `/vocab/rule-type/`) need SKOS-publishing maturity	Currently published as static Turtle + HTML. Per the v2 review, the broader SKOS-publication pattern (HTML / JSON-LD / Turtle / RDF/XML / CSV per vocabulary, with `/vocabularies` index endpoint exposing each as a `skos:ConceptScheme`) is a Garance-style maturity step.	When an implementation other than the reference service asks for it.
`openricx:` extension namespace remains under-publicised	The Turtle ontology stub at `/ns/ext/v1.html` and its declared terms should be communicated to the EGAD-adjacent community.	Outreach drafts in `docs/outreach/` - Sparna and Damigos targets identified.

Closed (recent)

2026-10-19, identifiers (service v0.17.22, spec v0.51.0) - One record now has one identifier. /graph names record, agent, repository, place, activity, rule, instantiation and function nodes by the @id the API gives them, the same identifiers the SPARQL graph has used since its rebuild that morning: the Egyptian Boat is https://ric.theahg.co.za/informationobject/egyptian-boat in the API, in /graph and in SPARQL. Subject terms and dates, which the API does not serve as entities, keep their own identifiers. That identifier no longer sends anyone to Heratio: a browser is redirected (303 See Other) to the record page in the Graph Explorer, and every other client, including one asking for Turtle, to the API record. Graph Primitives gains invariant 7 and Graph Traversal moves to 0.6.0; the subgraph-depth-1 and subgraph-depth-2 fixtures are re-captured.
2026-10-19, public SPARQL graph - The graph behind /sparql is no longer a static load. php artisan openric:rebuild-graph (service v0.17.20) rebuilds it from the same serializer the API uses, under the API’s own identifiers, checks it in a staging graph (every rico: term against RiC-O 1.1, no identifier in the old schemes, triple count within a band of the last build), backs up the old graph and swaps it in one SPARQL Update. The first live rebuild replaced 7,149 triples under https://ric.theahg.co.za/entity/... identifiers, which did not dereference, with 25,690 under the API’s; the old graph is kept as a backup. It runs every night at 03:00, after the 02:20 demonstration reset, and swaps nothing when nothing changed. Rights or privacy removals in the database now reach the graph by the next morning, or at once by running the command by hand. Its first check caught two classes the serializer sent that RiC-O 1.1 does not define (rico:Function, rico:ContactPoint), fixed in the same release as openricx: classes.
2026-10-19, web server - Python HTTP clients are no longer refused on the OpenRiC API. The host-wide bot rule still applies to the rest of ric.theahg.co.za and to the other sites, but requests to /api/ric/, /sparql and the record IRIs (/informationobject/, /actor/ and the other entity paths) pass whatever their User-Agent. Checked the same day: python-requests gets 200 from /api/ric/v1/health and 302 from /informationobject/cat-in-arms, and still gets 403 from /uploads/. The 60-requests-a-minute rate limit is unchanged.
2026-10-16, public SPARQL graph - The six properties that were not RiC-O 1.1 terms are renamed in place, after a full backup: rico:hasOrHadAgentName (371), rico:hasOrHadSubject for place access points (289), rico:physicalCharacteristicsNote (94), rico:hasCreator (30), openricx:descriptiveNote (17), rico:hasContentOfType (15). The extractor now writes the same terms, so a rebuild keeps them. The public graph uses no rico: property outside RiC-O 1.1.
2026-10-16, public SPARQL graph - At Heratio’s request, the statements of a record whose copyrighted content Heratio replaced, and of its creator, were removed from the graph (43 triples), with four records that no longer existed; no statement in the graph names them.
2026-10-16, demonstration data - The Egyptian Boat’s subgraph no longer shows the two instantiations of its removed third-party 3D model: both were unlinked from the boat (relation 912163 deleted, their record and file links cleared) and Heratio deleted the non-commercial file. The boat’s graph has 19 nodes; the fixtures subgraph-depth-1 and subgraph-depth-2 are re-captured.
2026-10-16, service v0.17.14 - Relation predicates: the relation-type table shared with Heratio carries 25 pre-1.1 predicate names (rico:hasInstantiation, rico:heldBy and others). The service now maps each to its RiC-O 1.1 property (for example rico:hasOrHadHolder, rico:isOrWasPartOf, rico:hasChild) in the relation list, single relations, relations-for and graph edges, and stores the 1.1 name on new relations, without changing the shared data. Checked live: the relation list shows only RiC-O 1.1 names, and a search for hasOrHadInstantiation finds the 22 relations stored under the old name.
2026-10-15, service v0.17.13 - Five rows closed and checked on the live service:
- Node type in /graph: CURIEs such as rico:RecordSet and rico:Place, as Viewing API §8.6 requires.
- Refusals: a missing, invalid or expired key, or a missing scope, on /api/ric/v1 returns an RFC 7807 problem document (.../errors/authentication-required, application/problem+json).
- Response headers: X-Content-Type-Options and Referrer-Policy are sent once; Referrer-Policy had been sent twice with conflicting values.
- /health: reports the release version.
- Relation example in the service’s OpenAPI: has_instantiation, a code from /relation-types; the old hasInstantiation was not a code and would have created a generic association.
2026-10-15, service v0.17.12 - Re-checked against the live service, closing these rows of the April 2026 migration list:
- Service description: reports its own release tag and spec_version: "0.46.0", and declares six normative profiles plus the sparql-access draft.
- OpenAPI tags: Repositories reads “ISDIAH repository surface - canonical: rico:CorporateBody with rico:hasOrHadHolder relations”, Functions reads “interim canonical: openricx:Function”, and Graph says SPARQL is offered only under the optional sparql-access draft.
- Activity @type: single activities and the list are rico:Activity with rico:hasActivityType; /activities/910375, for example, carries .../vocab/activity-type/production.
- JSON-LD @context: binds openricx: to https://openric.org/ns/ext/v1# and openric: to https://openric.org/ns/v1#.
- Pre-1.1 names in entity responses: a scan of a record, agent, repository and activity, the lists of activities, records, instantiations, functions, rules and places, a subgraph and a record export found none of rico:heldBy, rico:hasSubject, rico:hasLanguage, rico:hasMandate, rico:hasRecordPart, rico:isContainedIn, rico:Production or rico:Accumulation. The relation list is still open, above.
2026-10-15, viewer - Types are read by local name, so rico:Person, a full IRI and a bare Person resolve alike (localName in src/colours.js), and activities are coloured by rico:hasActivityType (getEffectiveType). The viewer reads the subgraph as plain JSON and does not process a JSON-LD context, so it needs no openricx: declaration.
2026-10-15, capture - The Activity form has one type with an activity-type dropdown (taxonomy ric_activity_type) instead of choosing @type. The Repository tile calls it a convenience surface, canonically a rico:CorporateBody with holder relations, and the Function tile says openricx:Function. Capture posts native fields, not RiC-O keys.
2026-10-15, conformance probe - --profile=<id> covers every profile, and the SPARQL checks are optional, so a server without sparql-access is not failed for a missing /sparql.
2026-10-15, phase numbering - The site used two phase systems, an internal “Phases 1-7” by feature area and a public “Phases 1-12+” roadmap. Both are replaced by the programme plan: Part I, the Standard, ending at the Standard Acceptance Gate, and Part II, OpenRiC Workspace. The developer page’s Phase 1 to 12 roadmap, with its historical version pills, is replaced by a short “Where things stand” summary.
2026-05-25, v0.38.1 - RiC-CM navigator reconciliation: declared. Resolved via option (c) - articulate the distinction rather than deprecate. OpenRiC’s /reference/ric-cm/ is a versioned, SPARQL-backed, declared-vs-inherited specification browser tied to spec releases; the Damigos / Ionian RiC-CM Nav is a standalone single-page graph navigator aimed at conceptual exploration. The two address different reader needs (spec-version reference vs. conceptual graph traversal) and the relationship is now declared as complementary, not competing on related-implementations. No deprecation; no fork. Either tool can cite the other.
2026-05-25, v0.38.1 - RiC-AG (Application Guidelines) promoted to first-class related-implementation. EGAD published RiC-AG v0.1 in October 2025; this spec now cross-references RiC-AG’s ISAD(G)/ISAAR(CPF)/ISDF/ISDIAH crosswalks as the authoritative reference in mapping.md §1.2, and RiC-AG has its own section on related-implementations. The forthcoming EAC-CPF → RiC-O 1.1 mapping (also announced under RiC-AG) is tracked separately in this drift log.
2026-04-25, v0.37.0 - RiC-O 1.1 namespace remediation, all 5 phases (A → E). Audit: 110 → 0 genuine emit-context violations.
2026-04-25, v0.37.0 - Per-document version headers (mapping/viewing-api/graph-primitives/conformance) bumped from 0.1.0-draft to 0.37.0.
2026-04-25, v0.37.0 - Mapping spec stale “review in progress” callout replaced with “REMEDIATION COMPLETE” callout.
2026-04-25, v0.37.0 - Audit doc opened with prominent STATUS banner.
2026-04-25, v0.37.0 - README current-version banner updated to v0.37.0.
2026-04-25, v0.37.0 - drift-log.md (this page) created.

How to file a new drift item

Open a discussion on openric/spec with the label drift, or open a PR adding a row to this page. Format:

| Surface | Currently observed | Target spec § | ETA / blocker |
|---|---|---|---|
| <which surface> | <what it does today> | <which spec section it should match> | <when, or what blocks it> |

OpenRiC’s commitment: every open drift item is named, located, and either has an ETA or has a blocker explanation.