Concepts

Content coming in a future release.

This chapter will cover the MarkSpec mental model: entries, shapes (Authored and Reference), types, traceability links, profiles, and listing directives. It is the skimmable reference all three audiences (architect, developer, compliance lead) read before diving into their audience-specific chapter.

This chapter will explain:

• Entries — the fundamental unit: a display ID, a title, a body, and a trailer block of attributes.
• Shapes — Authored entries (identified by a ULID stamped by markspec format) versus Reference entries (citations to external artefacts such as standards or upstream requirements).
• Types — the vocabulary layer declared by profiles; each type carries a display-ID pattern, allowed attributes, and traceability rules.
• Traceability links — directed edges in the requirement graph, created by trace attributes (Satisfies:, Derived-from:, Verified-by:, etc.).
• Profiles — layered manifests that declare type vocabulary, attribute rules, and display-ID patterns for a project or compliance standard.
• Listing directives — glossary, components, and references directives that generate structured listing documents from the entry graph.

Until this chapter ships, the canonical source is docs/spec/internal/markspec-core-data-model.md (§1 — the two-layer model and type system).