# Implementation guidelines

These guidelines keep implementations deterministic, offline friendly, and
aligned with module boundaries.

Core rules
- Determinism: stable ordering, pinned seeds, UTC timestamps.
- Offline posture: no live network calls in tests or fixtures.
- Provenance: sign evidence and keep tenant scope explicit.
- Boundaries: work within module directories and allowed shared libs.
- Versioning: bump schema versions for breaking changes.

Quality gates
- Add or update tests for every change.
- Keep fixtures and inputs.lock files in sync with outputs.
- Document contract changes in docs2 and module docs.

Related references
- docs/process/implementor-guidelines.md
- docs/18_CODING_STANDARDS.md
- docs/19_TEST_SUITE_OVERVIEW.md