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Tri-Authority Ecosystem Topology

Overview

FCC sits at the center of a three-authority coordination model. The framework itself (this repo, l2_fcc_agent_team_ext) owns the R.I.S.C.E.A.R. specification, the Find → Create → Critique workflow graph, the plugin ABCs, the persona registry, and the event-bus contracts. Around it, three distinct sibling projects each own a cross-cutting ecosystem concern: NEXUS owns research coordination and joint-venture statistics, PHOENIX owns open-science validation, quality gates, and patent IP consolidation, and ORCHESTRA owns the public cross-repo integration-test gate. Every FCC release coordinates with all three authorities, but through three distinct cadences and three distinct handoff contracts.

The tri-authority model is not a governance hierarchy. FCC is not "above" the authorities nor "below" them; rather, the four projects form a coordination hub-and-spoke where FCC is the only node that maintains bidirectional edges to all three authorities simultaneously. Consumer projects — LYRA (attestation bridge), POLARIS (patent/IP archive), AURORA (UX gateway), CONSTEL (federation v2 registry), and the ten constellation vocabulary packs — do not coordinate with the authorities directly. All authority-facing flows pass through FCC, which normalizes them into the plugin-ecosystem contracts that the consumer projects already understand.

The three authorities

NEXUS — Research & Joint Ventures

Codename origin: "Nexus" — the central coordination point. Carries the authoritative cross-project registries (port_allocation.yaml, ecosystem_projects.yaml) that FCC vendors under src/fcc/data/ecosystem/ and drift-checks in CI.

What NEXUS owns. Cross-project statistics aggregation, industry paper coordination, JV-standard enforcement, and the port-allocation authority of record. NEXUS governs how FCC and sibling projects converge on shared numeric invariants (persona counts, benchmark baselines, test-coverage floors, port reservations).

How FCC coordinates. FCC hands off industry-paper seed artifacts to NEXUS on RC PI cadence (Q3 2026 for the quantum-locality paper, Q4 2026 for the Zachman-R.I.S.C.E.A.R.+SAFe paper). FCC contributes architectural evidence (abstracts, outlines, UML-level figures, persona discipline), and NEXUS contributes experimental methodology, empirical results, and venue submission. NEXUS also feeds FCC the vendored registries via SHA256-pinned CI drift detection.

Coordination record: nexus-research-coordination.md.

PHOENIX — Open Science + Quality Gates + Patent IP

Codename origin: "Phoenix" — the validation firebird. Carries the 58-gate quality-gate registry, the 12 open-science templates, and the canonical ecosystem patent-IP mirror tree.

What PHOENIX owns. Open-science validation templates (OPEN-SCI-001..010), the 58 quality gates vendored into FCC at src/fcc/data/governance/quality_gates.yaml, and the ecosystem patent-IP consolidation tree at ai-coe-docs/docs/patent/polaris/ (POLARIS mirror, counsel-gated until FTO clearance on POLARIS-INV-001). PHOENIX is the authority that decides when a framework change requires a re-audit or a new gate.

How FCC coordinates. PHOENIX gates FCC via fcc audit personas --strict (which runs the full 58-gate registry), via the open-science templates that FCC personas adopt (LAR, OSCU, RHL use the templates for artifact production), and via the owner-approval-gated patent mirror PR (v1.4.3 staged but not yet landed). PHOENIX also drift-checks FCC's persona catalog against the QG-IP-CONS matrix.

Coordination record: phoenix-open-science-coordination.md.

ORCHESTRA — Cross-Repo Integration Tests

Codename origin: "Orchestra" — the conductor of the ensemble. Lives in the public ecosystem-integration-tests repo — the only public repo in the ecosystem's Tooling & Integration tier.

What ORCHESTRA owns. The cross-repo contract-test gate that validates FCC's stable fcc.api surface against every consumer project (POLARIS, LYRA, AURORA, CONSTEL, the ten constellation verticals, ATHENIUM, MNEMOSYNE). ORCHESTRA runs per-commit in the public repo and publishes a badge that FCC's README.md surfaces. It is the ecosystem's only always-on contract-compatibility CI lane.

How FCC coordinates. Every FCC release must green ORCHESTRA's contract tests before the tag lands. In v1.3.11 ORCHESTRA was advisory (informational only); v1.5.x promoted it to a required merge gate. Unlike NEXUS and PHOENIX coordination, ORCHESTRA runs automatically without owner approval — contract tests are version-pinned, and any failure is a hard stop.

Coordination record: orchestra-integration-tests-coordination.md.

Topology diagram

Preamble: The diagram below shows how FCC coordinates with the three ecosystem authorities. Solid arrows represent outbound handoff flows from FCC; dotted arrows represent read-only or observer relationships that the authorities maintain on FCC. Consumer projects relate to FCC through bridges and plugins — they do not have edges to the authorities directly.

flowchart TB
    subgraph FCC["FCC Framework"]
        fcc_api["fcc.api<br>(stable surface)"]
        personas["168 personas"]
        decoder["codename decoder"]
    end

    subgraph Authorities["Ecosystem Authorities"]
        NEXUS["NEXUS<br>Research &amp; JV<br>(research_center_ext)"]
        PHOENIX["PHOENIX<br>Open Science + QA + Patent<br>(ai-coe-docs)"]
        ORCHESTRA["ORCHESTRA<br>Integration Tests<br>(ecosystem-integration-tests, PUBLIC)"]
    end

    subgraph Consumers["Ecosystem Consumers"]
        LYRA
        POLARIS
        AURORA
        CONSTEL["CONSTEL + 10 constellations"]
    end

    FCC -->|"paper handoffs<br>(v1.5.3 Q3/Q4)"| NEXUS
    FCC -->|"patent mirror<br>open-science templates"| PHOENIX
    FCC -->|"contract tests<br>v1.3.11 advisory, v1.5.x required"| ORCHESTRA

    NEXUS -.->|"registries<br>port allocation"| FCC
    PHOENIX -.->|"58-gate drift<br>QG-IP-CONS"| FCC
    ORCHESTRA -.->|"contract gate<br>partner compatibility"| FCC

    Consumers -.->|"bridges / plugins"| FCC

    classDef future stroke-dasharray: 5 5

Invariants.

  • FCC is the only node with bidirectional edges to all three authorities — it is the coordination hub.
  • ORCHESTRA is the only PUBLIC repo in the ecosystem tooling tier (per the v1.6.1 codename decoder).
  • NEXUS and PHOENIX handoffs are owner-approval-gated; owner sign-off is required before any cross-repo PR lands. ORCHESTRA contract tests run automatically with no approval gate.
  • Consumer projects (LYRA, POLARIS, AURORA, CONSTEL and the ten constellations) are NOT direct dependents of the authorities. All cross-authority coordination flows through FCC, which normalizes authority contracts into plugin-ecosystem ABCs that consumers already understand.

Source: coordination/README.md + the three coordination records linked above.

Authority cadence comparison

Each authority runs on a different rhythm. Aligning a release against all three simultaneously is the core coordination challenge of every FCC tag.

Authority Cadence Gate type Approval model
NEXUS RC PI (quarterly: Q1 / Q2 / Q3 / Q4) Paper-handoff staging + registry drift SHA256 Owner-approval gated for cross-repo PRs; automated drift check in CI
PHOENIX Continuous (per-persona-change) + annual counsel FTO review 58-gate drift + open-science template adoption + patent-mirror PR Owner-approval gated for patent mirror; automated strict-audit in CI
ORCHESTRA Per-commit (public CI) Contract tests against every consumer project + constellation pack Fully automatic; no approval step

NEXUS's quarterly cadence is the slowest and biggest — industry-paper handoffs are staged releases coordinated with RC's own PI planning. PHOENIX's cadence is bimodal: continuous for the gate-drift + template adoption lane, annual for the patent FTO lane. ORCHESTRA's cadence is the fastest — per-commit contract tests in the public repo, with no owner gate.

How to contribute a new coordination record

When a new cross-repo coordination need emerges — say, a fourth authority, or a new handoff lane with an existing authority — the canonical path is: (1) copy the shared coordination-record template described in coordination/README.md; (2) file the new record under docs/ecosystem/coordination/ using the authority-codename-handoff-type slug; (3) add a one-line entry in this topology doc's "The three authorities" section and extend the PI cadence table; (4) update the mermaid diagram only if a new authority-level node is required. Sub-lanes within an existing authority (e.g., a second NEXUS paper) do not warrant a topology-doc update — they go in the authority's coordination record directly.

  • Codename decoder — authoritative mapping from codename to project, repo, clone path, and tier.
  • Ecosystem alignment status — three-tier project registry, per-tier responsibilities, port allocations.
  • Universal services — the 22-entry service-coordination superset that the three authorities govern at the service level.
  • ADR-010 six pillars — architectural context for the v1.5.0 ecosystem baseline.
  • ADR-009 universal services — decision log for how service-level coordination decomposes across the three authorities.