{"slug":"docs/canonical/02-BUSINESS-CONTEXT-SPINE","title":"02 — Business Context Spine Fabric","section":"docs","sectionLabel":"Docs","status":"unclassified","type":"document","path":"docs/canonical/02-BUSINESS-CONTEXT-SPINE.md","bytes":7270,"description":null,"updated":null,"source":"integratewise/Integratewise-docs-wiki","content":"\n**Canonical reference:** `00-SPINEWORKSPACE-INTEGRATEWISE-CANON.md` §5  \n**Status:** Canonical  \n**Tier-0:** This document defines the semantic foundation of SpineWorkspace.\n\n---\n\n## 1. Definition\n\nThe **Business Contextual Spine Fabric** is the tenant-scoped system of organizational operating context, continuity and governed state. It is not merely a database and it is not an ESB.\n\n**The Business Context Spine IS the organization's memory.** It is what the system knows, what is true enough to operate on, what is happening, what was decided, and what happened next. It is the ONE thing that everything else revolves around.\n\n**Without Business Context, there is no SpineWorkspace.** Business Context is the thread that connects every feature, every surface, every action in the product. The Human Workbench exists to present it. The AI Workbench exists to reason over it. Twin exists to help the human work with it. Spine Agents exist to act on it. Governance protects it. Execution acts on it. Reconciliation verifies it. Memory preserves it. None of it works without Business Context.\n\n> **The Spine gives work its business context.**\n\nThe closest ESB analogy is that it provides a common coordination substrate across many systems. The analogy stops there. A traditional integration bus primarily transports, routes and transforms messages. The Spine Fabric preserves the semantic and temporal context needed for humans and AI to understand work, decisions, evidence, authority and outcomes over time.\n\n> **The Spine is not primarily an integration layer or data store. It is the semantic operating substrate through which organizational business becomes contextual, actionable and continuous.**\n\n## 2. Business Context drives everything\n\nBusiness Context is not a database view, not a search index, not a record selector. It is the **complete operating reality** of the organization:\n\n```text\nMission · Objectives · Goals · KPIs · Initiatives\nOrganizations · Teams · People · Roles · Responsibilities\nCustomers · Accounts · Partners · Vendors · Products · Projects\nWork · Tasks · Commitments · Lifecycle States · Dependencies\nRelationships between entities and work\nEvents · Changes · Signals · Temporal History\nDecisions · Rationale · Approvals · Authority Lineage\nEvidence · Provenance · Source References\nPolicies · Capabilities · Execution Eligibility\nExpected Outcomes · Actual Outcomes · Verification State\n```\n\nEvery action in the system is grounded in this context:\n\n```text\nUser opens product    → Business Context determines what matters now\nWorkbench composes    → Business Context shapes the projection\nTwin reasons          → Business Context provides the objective and state\nAgent takes work      → Business Context provides the goal and authority\nGovernance evaluates  → Business Context provides risk, policy and impact\nExecution occurs      → Business Context defines the capability being performed\nReconciliation closes → Business Context is what actually changed\nMemory promotes       → Business Context is what the organization now knows\n```\n\nThe user should never have to \"feed context to the system.\" The system already knows the business. The user works; context is already there.\n\n## 3. Logical domains\n\nThe logical Business Context Spine carries three coupled domains:\n\n**Operational Truth.** Entities, fields, relationships, lifecycle state, work state, decisions, approvals, expected outcomes, source ownership and reconciliation status.\n\n**Knowledge and Evidence.** Documents, chunks, embeddings/search representations, citations, attachments, source artifacts and evidence references.\n\n**Business Memory and Continuity.** Continuity runs, commitments, decisions, synthesized organizational context, promotion state, temporal history and organizational memory.\n\nPersonal Contextual Memory and AI Continuity Memory are NOT equal peers to Business Context. They are working continuities that serve it — personal working notes for the human, working state for the AI. Neither is organizational memory. Neither is the Spine. The Spine is the business context.\n\n## 3. Logical truth before physical storage\n\nThe product architecture freezes the **logical Spine contract**, not one vendor-specific database. Physical implementation may use Postgres/D1, object storage, vector/search, event stores, caches and queues underneath the logical contract.\n\n> **The Business Context Spine is the canonical logical authority. Physical storage authority is an implementation/deployment ADR and must not redefine product semantics.**\n\n## 4. Mandatory Base Spine and additive expansion\n\nEvery tenant receives a valid mandatory Base Spine. The Spine is not generated only from whichever connectors a customer happens to install.\n\n```text\nEffective Spine\n= Mandatory Base Spine\n∪ Department Expansion\n∪ Industry Expansion\n∪ Role Expansion\n∪ Connector Expansion\n∪ Tenant Expansion\n∪ Contextual Expansion\n```\n\nNo expansion may remove tenancy, provenance, authority, evidence, lifecycle, sync or reconciliation contracts.\n\n## 5. Business Intent and Lifecycle Above the Tools\n\n```text\nMission → Objectives → Goals → KPIs → Initiatives → Work → Decisions → Actions → Outcomes → Learning\n```\n\nThe Business Context Spine links operating work back to this chain. Organizations operate through lifecycle transitions rather than static department silos alone:\n\n```text\nBusiness Objective → Operating Lifecycle → Event → State Transition → SOP / Process\n→ Activities → Records / Evidence → Human + AI Work → Decision / Approval\n→ Execution → Verification → Memory → Next State\n```\n\n## 6. State-Plane Separation\n\n| Plane | Purpose |\n|---|---|\n| **Business Context Spine** | Durable organizational operating truth and continuity. |\n| **Personal Contextual Memory** | Human-specific working continuity. |\n| **AI Continuity Memory** | Twin/agent working continuity. |\n| **Spine Cache** | Disposable hydration/acceleration state. |\n| **Knowledge** | Retrievable semantic representations linked to evidence. |\n| **Blobs** | Raw files, payloads, exports, attachments and evidence artifacts. |\n| **Session Logs** | Conversation, model/tool-call and interaction lifecycle. |\n| **Audit Logs** | Identity, authority, approval, model/agent, capability, execution and outcome lineage. |\n| **Sync State** | Cursors, checkpoints, retries, pending mutations, DLQ and conflicts. |\n| **Config State** | Compiled tenant/provider/policy/composition/sync choices. |\n| **Ephemeral Runtime** | Locks, leases, scratch state, temporary context and rate limits. |\n\nSpine Cache can always be rebuilt from canonical state. Cache never becomes truth. Knowledge representations must retain evidence links. Raw sessions are evidence/history; only governed promotion creates durable organizational memory.\n\n## 7. The feature test\n\n> **If a feature cannot explain how it relates to Business Context, Work, or a Business Outcome, it does not yet have a meaningful place in SpineWorkspace.**\n\nThis is the clean test for future features, architecture decisions and product direction. If it does not connect to the Business Context Spine, it does not belong.\n"}