Specifications as Contracts

Specifications that define required behaviors, interfaces, or Acceptance Criteria are Contracts, not suggestions.

These Contracts state what must be true and what "done" means. Humans and AI Agents implement against them. They do not reinterpret, expand, or weaken them without explicit human authority.

Changing a Contract requires human decision. AI Agents may propose revisions; they may not enact them. Once accepted, a Contract remains the authoritative reference until the human revises it.

Consequences:

• Work has a fixed target instead of open-ended interpretation.
• Implementation drift is constrained.
• Verification has a stable reference.
• Humans keep control of purpose, scope, and the definition of "done".

This applies to any engineered System. The documents may be Component Specifications, interface definitions, design specifications, or safety requirements. In each case, the document is a Contract.

A Specification treated as optional guidance is not a Contract and does not satisfy this principle.

Applied in the Specification #

These clauses of the Normative Structural Specification name Specifications as Contracts among their grounds.

• §1.1 Authority
• §1.3 Human authority
• §1.5 Compliance and deviation
• §1.7 This Specification is high-stability
• §6.1 Component Specifications
• §6.2 Required sections, linted
• §6.4 The Specification is the durable alignment artifact
• §6.13 Specification-first Gate
• §7.12 Acceptance Criteria must not be weakened
• §15.2 Non-delegable human authorities
• §16.2 Minimum Normative Check set