Format contracts
| Document version | Date | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| v1 | 2026-08-07 | Collect the format contracts into one directory |
This directory holds the normative engineering contracts for the artefacts the project reads and writes. A contract states what an artefact is, field by field, so that a second reader on another platform can be written from the document rather than from the code that already exists. The decision behind a format, and the alternatives it rejected, belong to its ADR instead.
| Document | Artefact | Version |
|---|---|---|
| asset manifest v1 | the canonical manifest.petasset text grammar and the pet presentation schema | v0.2.0 |
| save format v1 | the 84-byte saved world payload | v0.4.0 |
| asset pack v1 | the embedded asset pack the converter writes and the device reads | v0.5.0 |
File names carry the format version rather than the product version, because a format outlives the release that introduced it. A new version of a format is a new document beside the old one, and the old one stays as it is, because something written by an earlier release may still have to be read.
Each contract states its own compatibility promise, and the three differ on purpose. The save payload is user data that must outlive the process that wrote it, the pack is a build output that never leaves the firmware image that reads it, and the manifest is a project-owned authoring source rather than a modding interface.