# Internal: Manifest

## Purpose

Explain the session-progress model implemented by `internal/manifest`. Physical
manifest placement belongs in
[Operations](../operations.md#local-state-layout).

## Session Manifest

`manifest.Manifest` records:

- required `schema_version: narratio.session-manifest.v1`
- identity (`session_id`, `campaign`, `run_id`)
- local path metadata (`local_workdir`, `local_spool_dir`)
- remote identity metadata (`s3_bucket`, `s3_session_prefix`, `s3_run_prefix`)
- `inputs` records
- durable `artifacts` records
- per-stage `stages` map, including the ordinary cleanup stage record

Session, campaign, and run identities in local and downloaded manifests must be
portable opaque segments. Unsafe legacy identities are rejected with migration
guidance rather than being normalized into a different workspace or remote
namespace.

Decoding rejects unknown typed fields, including informational fields inside
`effective_config` and its nested selection. The schema version remains
`narratio.session-manifest.v1`; there is no compatibility reader that silently
drops retired fields. See [overlay migration](../operations.md#migrating-manifest-overlay-provenance)
for deliberate migration of retired selection provenance. Cleanup progress uses
only the cleanup entry in `stages`.

Every persisted session manifest has a non-nil `stages` map. Each entry is
non-nil and its embedded `name` exactly matches its map key; loading never
invents either marker. A missing or unsupported schema version, or incomplete
stage identity, is unsupported local state: move it aside and regenerate it,
or restore a verified current committed snapshot when that is authoritative.

Prepare records independent `party` and `players` input checksums. In canonical
party mode, the party record retains its campaign source identity while the
players record uses `derived_from_party`; raw roster content is never embedded
in manifest metadata. Both records remain the durable authority for consumers
of their prepared input source IDs.

The model admits these stage states:

- `pending`
- `running`
- `succeeded`
- `failed`
- `skipped`
- `stale`
- `interrupted`

### Transcribe-owned speaker state

A `transcribe` stage record may carry `transcribe_state_version: 1` and a
`transcribe_speakers` map keyed by the existing derived speaker ID. The version
is the authority marker: a versioned empty map means that no earlier speaker
completion is reusable. Absence of both fields is accepted as legacy
aggregate-only state so current Narratio can read older manifests.

Each map entry represents one completed speaker only. It binds a versioned
fingerprint to the session-relative audio path, audio SHA-256 and size, one
canonical `transcript_raw` output with its path, SHA-256 and size, and the
producer run ID. Paths must be canonical and session-relative, checksums must
be lowercase SHA-256 values, and the record and output producer identities
must agree. Other stages cannot carry this transcribe-owned state.
Audio size is nonnegative; WhisperX determines whether that audio can be
transcribed. Output size remains positive and the transcript must be valid JSON.

Transcribe reconciles this collection against the current prepared audio set
and observable WhisperX semantics. Missing or corrupt regular outputs become
work; unsafe or non-regular evidence is rejected. It saves the reconciled
collection before HTTP dispatch and saves a detached candidate after each
validated completion. Only after a save succeeds is the candidate installed as
live authority. Canonical bytes produced before an unsuccessful save are not a
completion record.

Aggregate transcribe status still describes the whole invocation. A failed,
running, stale, or interrupted aggregate may therefore retain reusable speaker
records, while aggregate outputs are declared only after the current
collection is complete. Ordinary retry reconciles and reuses those records.
Force first checkpoints an empty current collection, preventing later retries
from reviving pre-force results.

Older aggregate-only transcribe success is conservatively regenerated once
when transcribe is selected because it does not bind individual outputs to the
audio bytes used. The session-manifest schema identifier remains
`narratio.session-manifest.v1`; this additive state is accepted by current
Narratio, but older strict-decoding binaries may reject manifests after these
fields have been written.

### Analyze-owned artifact state

Every `analyze` stage record carries `analyze_state_version: 1` and an
`analyze_artifacts` map keyed by normalized configured artifact key. The
version is the authority marker: version 1 with no entries is a valid evaluated
empty set. An absent or unsupported version is unsupported local state and is
rejected rather than being treated as aggregate-only authority.

Each analyze artifact record has one disposition:

- `current`: the configured artifact is available and carries a versioned
  fingerprint plus a complete output record and separate output size;
- `stale`: the recorded semantic identity is no longer current;
- `missing`: no validated current result exists;
- `failed`: the attempted work failed and carries a bounded diagnostic; or
- `unselected`: the artifact was intentionally outside the evaluated set.

Records bind their normalized key and dependencies, fingerprint contract when
evaluated, canonical session-relative output identity when current, producing
Narratio run, update time, and bounded non-secret Scriptorium provenance and
diagnostic paths. A current output includes its configured source ID, contract,
checksum, and positive byte size. Non-current records cannot carry an output,
so an older file is not advertised through stale, missing, failed, or
unselected state.

Family-produced records additionally retain optional `family` and
`character_id` provenance supplied by configuration resolution. These fields
do not replace the concrete configured key or infer family membership from a
name, so older records without them remain valid.

The session-stage collection is the reconciled authority across invocations.
These records remain analyze-owned data inside the fixed stage; they are not
dynamic stages or generic subtasks.

Analyze checkpoints one complete validated candidate collection after each
successful artifact and before exposing that artifact to later work. It saves a
detached manifest candidate and installs its version, collection, and updated
timestamp into live state only after the store reports success. Aggregate stage
outputs are ordinary result outputs rebuilt in configured-key order from current
session records only.

Successful incremental execution replaces only evaluated artifact records and
preserves valid unrelated current records. Rebuilt outputs are compared by
bytes and contract: an unchanged identity permits an unselected dependent with
the same recomputed fingerprint to remain current, while a changed identity
removes output authority from every unselected transitive dependent by marking
it stale. A partial analyze invocation can therefore succeed while unrelated
configured records remain stale. Existing canonical files never create current
records without validated execution and a successful checkpoint.

Aggregate analyze status is deliberately coarser than this collection. Resume
validation may skip a succeeded aggregate record when the selected artifact
closure is current even if unrelated records are stale. Conversely, a stale
aggregate record may cross the ordinary runner boundary and perform zero
Scriptorium calls when reconciliation proves every selected artifact current;
ordinary successful stage completion then restores the aggregate status.

On an artifact error, analyze installs a complete retry collection on the live
manifest before returning. The active record is failed without output, current
transitive dependents are stale, unrelated current records survive, and only
earlier checkpointed completions remain current. The runner's ordinary failure
path marks aggregate analyze failed, clears aggregate outputs, invalidates
delivery dependents, and saves that collection. A terminal session-save failure
is joined with the original adapter, validation, filesystem, cancellation, or
checkpoint cause.

If an artifact checkpoint fails, analyze rolls its working collection back to
the last committed collection before constructing the active failed record.
Newly materialized canonical bytes therefore remain incidental and cannot
become current authority. A later ordinary run reconciles the durable records,
reuses earlier current artifacts, and resumes with the failed or stale work.
The same recovery applies after process interruption: the aggregate record may
be non-successful, but every completed artifact checkpoint remains reusable.

## Remote Commit Manifest

`artifacts.RemoteCommitManifest` is a separate, versioned remote snapshot
contract. It is not a serialized session manifest and contains no local
post-publication assertion such as `current_pointer_written`. A remote commit
identifies one campaign, session, and run and declares its immutable artifact
set. Each artifact has a typed source, immutable destination key, SHA-256
checksum, size, and storage generation.

`current/commit-pointer.json` is the sole mutable selector for the new
contract. It identifies exactly one run-scoped `runs/{run_id}/commit.json` and
binds that object by checksum, size, and generation. Readers strictly reject
unknown fields, version mismatches, pointer/commit identity mismatches, and
objects that do not match their declaration.

An absent commit pointer means no remote state is published. Republish to
establish a current immutable snapshot.

## Persistence Semantics

`manifest.LocalStore`:

- accepts only the exact supported session-manifest schema version;
- rejects unknown fields and multiple JSON values;
- validates stage-map identity without synthesizing missing maps, records, or
  names;
- retains only representation-preserving collection normalization;
- writes through a sibling temporary file and atomic replacement visibility;
- updates `updated_at` on save.

### Checkpoint persistence boundary

Analyze and transcribe share one private checkpoint operation in
`internal/stage`. Their typed callers still decide when to checkpoint, validate
their collections, populate stage-owned fields, and serialize access. The
shared operation copies the manifest and its checkpoint-relevant mutable
collections, applies the typed update to the copied target record, and calls
the existing `manifest.Store` exactly once. Only after that save succeeds does
it promote the saved target record and manifest `updated_at` into live state;
it preserves an existing target record's identity and leaves unrelated live
stage records in place.

The copy boundary includes stage records, input and artifact slices, aggregate
output/log/configuration slices, and the typed analyze and transcribe
collections that callbacks or `LocalStore.Save` may modify. Metadata and other
pointer fields remain shared read-only because neither checkpoint callback nor
the store mutates them. This is a bounded execution helper, not a general
manifest clone or a transaction across transcript/artifact files.

Manifest replacement provides atomic visibility, not a crash- or power-loss
durability guarantee. Callers reload after a returned save error before retrying.
A transcribe or analyze checkpoint error leaves the prior manifest collection
as authority. The runner then attempts to persist the aggregate failure; if
that terminal save also fails, its error is joined with the originating failure
and the next invocation must reconcile from the last readable manifest.

## Execution Semantics

Planning and execution share one pure pre-execution decision over the recorded
stage status, force selection, and normalized resume-validation result. That
decision identifies run versus reuse and any required stale and dependent
invalidation transition. Planning applies it only to a cloned manifest.
Execution remains the sole owner of observed stage results and persistence.

For each selected stage, the application runner computes semantic evidence,
performs any eligible resume validation, applies the pre-execution decision,
and persists required invalidation before either reusing the existing success
or beginning an attempt. The same one-stage execution owner marks the attempt
running before invoking the stage and then records and persists its failed,
skipped, or successful terminal state before a later stage may start. On
success it records outputs, logs, generated configuration references, metadata,
and—when the stage implements the optional contract—a versioned
semantic-configuration fingerprint. Artifact
records may include optional contract and external provenance objects; old
manifests remain compatible when those fields are absent. A successful forced
rerun marks only succeeded transitive dependent session-stage records stale.
The application owns a fixed dependency relation distinct from execution order;
dependents are returned in canonical order. Render and extract therefore never
stale one another, while either can stale analyze, publish, notify, and cleanup.

Starting an execution clears the current session-stage record's prior outputs,
logs, generated configuration references, metadata, and semantic fingerprint.
Failed and skipped
transitions enforce the same clearing rule directly, while success repopulates
only fields returned by the new result. Marking a record stale does not clear
those details because resume validation and diagnosis may still require them
before execution begins.

Aggregate lifecycle clearing deliberately preserves both the transcribe-owned
speaker collection and the analyze-owned per-artifact collection. This lets
later reconciliation replace only non-current entries without erasing durable
completions. Other stages retain aggregate-only lifecycle behavior and are
forbidden from carrying either collection.

A stage may explicitly return a skipped disposition and stable reason. The
runner persists that outcome in the session manifest, clears older outputs,
logs, generated configuration references, and metadata, then applies any
bounded details from the current skip and continues. This self-skip is distinct from deciding not to execute an
already-succeeded stage and is reconsidered on later runs. Skipped results
cannot contain outputs. An intentional self-skip records the current semantic
fingerprint because it is a completed, reusable stage result; failed or
interrupted work never promotes one.

When an already-succeeded stage is skipped, the session manifest deliberately
retains its existing succeeded record because it remains the cross-invocation
progress authority. If a stage supplies semantic configuration evidence, reuse first
requires the persisted positive schema version and lowercase SHA-256 digest to
match the current resolved stage semantics. Missing semantic evidence, malformed
evidence, or a mismatch makes the stage and its fixed transitive dependents
stale. The existing stage-specific resume
validator runs only after this semantic check succeeds; both checks are
required. Extraction, analyze, and cleanup have resume validators and may
reject an otherwise eligible skip when their selected durable evidence is
obsolete; the runner marks the aggregate record stale and executes it.
Analyze's validator can still accept a partial selection when only unrelated
artifact records are stale.

Implemented reuse coverage is deliberately split between aggregate semantic
evidence and focused durable validators:

| Work | Reuse authority | Focused owners |
| --- | --- | --- |
| prepare | aggregate semantic fingerprint | [prepare](stage-prepare.md) |
| transcribe speakers | aggregate semantic fingerprint plus per-speaker input/output reconciliation | [transcribe](stage-transcribe.md), [WhisperX](../integrations/whisperx.md) |
| merge | aggregate semantic fingerprint | [merge](stage-merge.md), [Seriatim](../integrations/seriatim.md) |
| polish | aggregate semantic fingerprint | [polish](stage-polish.md), [Audita](../integrations/audita.md) |
| normalize | aggregate semantic fingerprint | [normalize](stage-normalize.md), [Seriatim](../integrations/seriatim.md) |
| trim | aggregate semantic fingerprint | [trim](stage-trim.md), [Scriptorium](../integrations/scriptorium.md), [Seriatim](../integrations/seriatim.md) |
| render | aggregate semantic fingerprint | [render](stage-render.md), [Seriatim](../integrations/seriatim.md) |
| extract | aggregate semantic fingerprint plus reference/output validator | [extract](stage-extract.md), [Notarius](../integrations/notarius.md) |
| analyze artifacts | per-artifact fingerprint, reconciliation, and output validator | [analyze](stage-analyze.md), [Scriptorium](../integrations/scriptorium.md) |
| publish | aggregate semantic fingerprint plus immediate lock/commit checks | [publish](stage-publish.md), [storage adapter](adapters.md) |
| notify | aggregate delivery-mode fingerprint | [pipeline overview](overview.md), [configuration](../config.md#notifications) |
| cleanup | aggregate semantic fingerprint plus publish-evidence and target-absence validator | [cleanup](stage-cleanup.md), [workspace](workspace.md) |

These contracts record resolved choices Narratio can observe, not operational
runner tuning. External model, module, prompt, profile, and configuration-file
contents that a tool privately loads remain outside the contract when their
configured identifier is unchanged; operators must force the affected work
after such a private content change.

The session manifest is the authoritative stage-progress ledger across
invocations. It retains the most recently resolved invocation's bounded
configuration provenance. It identifies the selected overlay name and source
(`explicit` when selected) plus the effective configuration digest, but never a raw
secret or overlay content. This provenance is informational: it does not
participate in stage resume or cache decisions. An overlay change therefore
invalidates only stages whose semantic configuration changed. When a private
external-tool model, module, prompt, or profile changes behind an unchanged
configured identifier, use `--force` for the affected work.

`session plan` computes the same current fingerprint and applies the shared
decision and invalidation rules to a cloned manifest. It predicts the runner
decision without persisting session state. The semantic fingerprint owner
hashes deterministic JSON from stage-owned typed structs; stage providers must
exclude secrets, complete effective-configuration dumps, and operational
values that cannot affect canonical results. Concrete coverage is owned by the
focused stage and integration documents linked above.

Before an explicitly bounded execution starts after `prepare`, the application
reads the session manifest and accepts only `succeeded` or `skipped` for every
excluded canonical prefix stage. The first other status or absent record fails
the request before layout mutation, adapter initialization, session-manifest
writes, or run-directory creation. Excluded prefix records are not passed to
resume validators. Records after the selected end are not prerequisites and
may be made stale by selected work without being scheduled.

After a publish commits remotely, any configured local cleanup is first recorded
as a session-manifest obligation before deletion begins. Each target becomes
complete only after its confined deletion (or safe absence check) and a
successful manifest save. An incomplete obligation is retried when publish
executes again and retains the committed run and remote identity that authorized
it; an invocation that does not execute publish does not perform cleanup.

Each invocation derives campaign, session, run, local-path, and remote-prefix
metadata from the validated resolved configuration as one projection. A persisted
session manifest must agree on campaign and session identity before execution;
the current projection is refreshed for every invocation while stage progress,
inputs, and durable artifacts remain session history.

For handled failures after the session identity transition, the runner records
the failure on the session ledger and atomically attempts its save while
preserving the originating error. Abrupt process death remains an accepted case
where the last session transition can require operator interpretation.

## Invariants

- stage resume/skip decisions are session-manifest driven.
- semantic fingerprint comparison precedes stage-specific resume validation.
- only successful and intentional-skipped results promote current semantic
  evidence.
- running, failed, and self-skipped stages do not retain result payloads from
  an earlier success.
- stale stages retain prior details until replacement execution starts.
- force reruns stale succeeded stages in the fixed dependency relation.
- the session manifest is the only durable local progress ledger.
- remote commitment is established by a verified current pointer and remote
  commit relationship, never by a mutable session-manifest boolean.

## Implementation And Tests

- Models and transitions: `internal/manifest/manifest.go`
- Remote commit model and readers: `internal/artifacts/remote_commit.go`,
  `internal/artifacts/current_state_commit.go`,
- Persistence and validation: `internal/manifest/store.go`
- Transcribe speaker state: `internal/manifest/transcribe_state.go`
- Package tests: `internal/manifest/*_test.go`
- Assembled execution behavior: `internal/app/runner_test.go`,
  `internal/app/run_stage_test.go`