A frozen core schema + swappable domain profiles

Context¶

The bundled schema was three software-flavoured types (decision, issue, architecture). Generalizing docir to other domains (research, ops, legal) meant mutating that base set every time, with no separation between what is universal and what is domain-specific.

Decision¶

Split the bundled schema into a frozen core and named profiles:

• core (infra/profiles.py::CORE_SCHEMA_YAML) — domain-agnostic: the decision type (ADRs exist everywhere), the relation-kind registry, and staleness cadences. Always included.
• profiles — software (issue, architecture), research (hypothesis, experiment, finding), ops (runbook, incident, postmortem), legal (policy, contract, obligation). Each layers types on top of the core.

A docs-schema.yaml selects them with profiles: [..]; the loader merges core -> each named profile -> the file's own inline overrides (later wins on name conflicts). The default file is profiles: [software], so the resolved default type set is exactly the previous three — a zero-behaviour-change default.

Backward compatibility: a schema file with no profiles: key is parsed the old inline-only way (no core injected, relations unconstrained), so hand-authored schemas keep working untouched.

Consequences¶

• Easier: generalizing to a new domain is picking a profile, not editing the base; the core stays small and stable.
• Harder: schema resolution now has a merge step (core + profiles + inline) with its own precedence and prefix-collision rules; documented in profiles.py and the default file's comments.
• Follow-up: profiles are bundled in-code as YAML strings; a future change could let users drop profile files into ~/.docir/profiles/ to add their own without editing the package.