Attested Types

Types exist through attestation - 'restaurant' is real because someone attested it, not because a schema declares it. That attestation carries everything: what fields matter, which ones are searchable, how it appears visually, and crucially, who made these decisions and when. Types can contradict, overlap, and evolve because they're attestations - the mess is the message. Multiple actors might attest different meanings for 'restaurant' - a health inspector sees safety fields, a food critic sees ambiance, a delivery app sees logistics. This multiplicity isn't a problem to solve - it's the actual shape of knowledge in contested domains. Types become part of the conversation, not the rules that govern it.

Symbol

⊢ (turnstile) — an actor's judgment that a pattern deserves a name. From type theory: "I assert this has type." Available as sym.Type (Go) and Type from @generated/sym.js (frontend).

Attestation format

A type attestation is: [typeSubject] is type. No context — a type exists because it was attested, not because it belongs to a namespace. The source field records who attested it. Attributes carry display metadata (color, label, opacity) and semantic information. rich_string_fields declares which attribute names contain searchable text (used for full-text search and embedding). array_fields declares which attributes hold lists.

The type name is its own actor (self-certifying in typespace), avoiding bounded storage limits.

Ensuring types from plugins

A plugin attests its types on startup. Both Go and Rust SDKs provide convenience helpers that check-then-create, making the call idempotent.

Go (ats/types):

types.EnsureTypes(store, "my-plugin",
    types.TypeDef{
        Name:             "document",
        Label:            "Document",
        Color:            "#e67e22",
        RichStringFields: []string{"content"},
    },
)

Rust (qntx-grpc plugin feature):

use qntx_grpc::plugin::{TypeDef, ensure_types};

ensure_types(&channel, &auth_token, "my-plugin", vec![
    TypeDef::new("document", "Document", "#e67e22")
        .rich_string_fields(vec!["content"]),
]).await?;

Both helpers query for an existing [name] is type attestation before creating. Safe to call every startup.

Identity

Type attestations use compact ASUIDs: TY-{NAME}-{SUFFIX} (e.g. TY-COMIT-7K4M3B9X).

The prefix carries the semantics — no need to repeat "TYPE" as a segment.