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T-024 — Cultural-attestation conformance tests (extends T-017)

T-024 — Cultural-attestation conformance tests (extends T-017). Covers Layout; How a downstream consumer wires this in; Vector regeneration; Registry coverage.

Conformance method / historical test inventory
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T-024 — Cultural-attestation conformance tests (extends T-017)

Id

manthan-herald-protocol-tests-conformance-cultural-readme

Project

Manthan

Source path

manthan/herald-protocol/tests/conformance/cultural/README.md

Source sha256

146b6c3f0348f050f0426dff31a462650d1b330e77df360284781e313e2f365c

Local copy sha256

146b6c3f0348f050f0426dff31a462650d1b330e77df360284781e313e2f365c

Repo head

3a94084024a3434cef331fecac91c2c3b43f0313

Date
Not recorded
Date basis

Original publication date not established; Git revision date retained separately.

Author

Not explicitly stated in source

Author basis

Unknown; Git committer not substituted for document author.

Last source commit

8b75d1b0157c20a0a463f0e31008ef9f73099beb

Last source commit date

2026-06-08T07:40:14Z

Document status

Conformance method / historical test inventory

Summary

T-024 — Cultural-attestation conformance tests (extends T-017). Covers Layout; How a downstream consumer wires this in; Vector regeneration; Registry coverage.

Topics
  • Protocol and verification
  • Layout
  • How a downstream consumer wires this in
  • Vector regeneration
Theme

Protocol and verification

Priority

reference

Related ids
  • manthan-herald-protocol-spec
  • manthan-herald-protocol-threats
Evidence concerns
  • Recovered source text is preserved verbatim. Assertions, comparisons, commands and results belong to its original context; they were not re-executed or externally re-verified during this corpus review.
  • Historical record: current deployment, task completion and test status must not be inferred from this date-bound document.
Word count

457

Bytes

3677

Source relative

herald-protocol/tests/conformance/cultural/README.md

Remote mirror

manthan/herald-protocol/tests/conformance/cultural/README.md

Full text preserved

True

T-024 — Cultural-attestation conformance tests (extends T-017)

This module attaches a cultural-attestation Category to the T-017 conformance
runner. It checks two layers of conformance for HERALD cultural attestations:

1. Wire layer. Cultural attestations are carried as opaque (type, value)
blobs (SPEC §4.2 line 253). The protocol verifier MUST NOT reject an
otherwise-valid envelope on the strength of a cultural attestation. The
runner reuses T-003's verifyEnvelope to confirm this.
2. Shape layer. Once the wire layer reports valid, every cultural
attestation is checked against src/registry.ts, which transcribes the
schemas declared in T-013's registries/cultural-attestations.md. A vector
whose declared cultural attestation fails its registry-side schema is
classified as shape-invalid (still wire-valid; reputation systems may
choose to discount it but the protocol still carries it).

The runner does not police reputation systems. Reputation-neutrality
(e.g. vibe, haiku, mood) is asserted in the runner's emitted reasons
so an auditor can detect a reputation system that scores them, but
enforcement is out of scope for a wire-conformance test (CHARTER §3 preface,
T-013 line 13).

Layout

tests/conformance/cultural/
├── package.json
├── src/
│   ├── registry.ts            # type → shape validator table (9 schemas)
│   ├── cultural-category.ts   # Category registration + dispatch logic
│   ├── reconstruct-cultural.ts # rebuilds Envelope objects from vector inputs
│   └── build-vectors.ts       # deterministic vector generator
├── vectors/
│   └── cultural-vectors.json  # 14 generated vectors (committed)
└── test/
    └── cultural.test.ts       # 16 node:test cases

How a downstream consumer wires this in

Importing the module side-effect-registers the Category with T-017. From a
runner script:

import "@herald/conformance-cultural-t024/src/cultural-category.ts";
import { run } from "@herald/conformance-runner-t017/src/runner.ts";

const { output, code } = await run({
  vectorsPath: "./vectors/cultural-vectors.json",
});
console.log(output);
process.exit(code);

Or from CI:

node --experimental-strip-types --import "data:text/javascript,await import('cultural-category.ts')" \
     ../T-017/src/runner.ts \
     --vectors-path vectors/cultural-vectors.json

Vector regeneration

The committed vectors/cultural-vectors.json is the deterministic output of
src/build-vectors.ts. It is signed by T-003 itself, so any change to T-003's
canonicalisation will surface as a verifier failure on the next test run.
Regenerate after a deliberate T-003 change with:

node --experimental-strip-types src/build-vectors.ts

Registry coverage

The shape registry covers nine cultural attestation types: the full affective
family from CHARTER §3.1 (mood, flinch, tilt, weariness, vibe,
awe, dread, aphasia) plus haiku from §3.6 as an aesthetic exemplar.
The remaining cultural types (citation, endorsement, dream, etc.) carry
freeform shapes per T-013 and are out of scope for v0.2 of this extension.
Adding a schema is a one-line append to SCHEMAS in src/registry.ts plus
a positive/negative pair in test/cultural.test.ts's self-consistency block.

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