Ontology Corpus Reference

The MIF (Modeled Information Format) ontology corpus is the set of ontologies maintained in this repository. Every ontology is a flat file directly under ontologies/. Each ontologies/<name>.ontology.yaml is the source of record, and each has a committed ontologies/<name>.ontology.jsonld projection beside it, generated from the YAML. There are no subdirectories, and there is no separate examples tree.

Catalog

Four base ontologies (mif-base, shared-traits, engineering-base, mif-generic) plus fourteen domain ontologies, eighteen in all. The version column is the YAML ontology.version field.

Ontology id	Version	Path	Description
`mif-base`	1.0.0	`ontologies/mif-base.ontology.yaml`	Foundation: the knowledge triad namespaces and core traits.
`shared-traits`	1.0.0	`ontologies/shared-traits.ontology.yaml`	Foundation: cross-domain reusable trait mixins.
`engineering-base`	0.1.0	`ontologies/engineering-base.ontology.yaml`	Intermediate engineering supertypes (`versioned`, `documented`, `dated`, `cited`) the engineering domains extend.
`mif-generic`	1.0.0	`ontologies/mif-generic.ontology.yaml`	Generic built-in entity types, always enabled for all topics.
`biology-research-lab`	0.1.0	`ontologies/biology-research-lab.ontology.yaml`	Biology research lab entities with full lifecycle traits.
`data-engineering`	0.2.0	`ontologies/data-engineering.ontology.yaml`	Data engineering domain entities.
`market-research`	0.1.0	`ontologies/market-research.ontology.yaml`	Segments, competitors, sizing, forces, and market intelligence.
`mif-docs`	1.0.0	`ontologies/mif-docs.ontology.yaml`	Document genres of the mif-docs suite and the relationships connecting them.
`observability`	0.1.0	`ontologies/observability.ontology.yaml`	Services, telemetry signals, ownership registries, and roadmap signals.
`platform-engineering`	0.1.0	`ontologies/platform-engineering.ontology.yaml`	Internal developer portals, portal plugins, software templates, golden paths, and typed integrations.
`psycholinguistics`	0.1.0	`ontologies/psycholinguistics.ontology.yaml`	Psychological and linguistic constructs, stylometric and psychometric features.
`regenerative-agriculture`	0.1.0	`ontologies/regenerative-agriculture.ontology.yaml`	Regenerative agriculture entities with ecosystem coverage.
`regenerative-agriculture-research`	0.3.1	`ontologies/regenerative-agriculture-research.ontology.yaml`	Research observations about regenerative farming practices.
`regulatory-legal`	0.1.0	`ontologies/regulatory-legal.ontology.yaml`	Acts, obligations, authorities, jurisdictions, contracts, and sanctions.
`scientific`	0.1.0	`ontologies/scientific.ontology.yaml`	Studies, methods, data, and provenance.
`software-engineering`	0.5.0	`ontologies/software-engineering.ontology.yaml`	Software incidents and SDLC operational procedures.
`software-security`	0.1.0	`ontologies/software-security.ontology.yaml`	Vulnerabilities, weaknesses, controls, threat actors, malware, and indicators of compromise.
`trend-analysis`	0.1.0	`ontologies/trend-analysis.ontology.yaml`	Signals, drivers, trends, scenarios, and forecasts.

Namespace triad

mif-base defines three top-level namespaces, each prefixed with an underscore to mark it as a base-type namespace. Each carries a type_hint and a set of children. The path format is _<top-level>/<child> (for example, _semantic/decisions).

Namespace	`type_hint`	Description
`_semantic`	`semantic`	Facts, concepts, relationships (declarative knowledge).
`_episodic`	`episodic`	Events, experiences, timelines (time-bound records).
`_procedural`	`procedural`	Step-by-step processes (how-to knowledge).

Child path	`type_hint`	Description
`_semantic/decisions`	`semantic`	Architectural choices with rationale.
`_semantic/knowledge`	`semantic`	APIs, context, learnings, security (factual knowledge).
`_semantic/entities`	`semantic`	Entity definitions: technologies, components, systems.
`_semantic/preferences`	`semantic`	User preferences, settings, configuration choices.
`_episodic/incidents`	`episodic`	Production issues, outages, postmortems.
`_episodic/sessions`	`episodic`	Debug sessions, work sessions, meeting notes.
`_episodic/blockers`	`episodic`	Impediments, issues preventing progress.
`_procedural/runbooks`	`procedural`	Operational procedures, SOPs, playbooks.
`_procedural/patterns`	`procedural`	Code conventions, best practices, testing strategies.
`_procedural/migrations`	`procedural`	Migration steps, upgrade procedures, data transformations.

A type_hint value is one of semantic, episodic, or procedural. Domain ontologies add their own namespaces under these top-level paths.

Trait catalog

Traits are reusable field mixins composed into entity types. Core traits come from mif-base; shared traits come from shared-traits (which extends mif-base).

Core traits (`mif-base`)

Trait	Fields	Description
`timestamped`	`created_at` (date-time), `updated_at` (date-time)	Adds creation and update timestamps.
`confidence`	`confidence` (number, 0.0 to 1.0)	Adds a confidence score for freshness and validity tracking.
`provenance`	`source` (string), `author` (string)	Adds source tracking.

Shared traits (`shared-traits`)

Twenty traits, grouped as they are in the source file.

Group	Trait	Key fields	Description
Lifecycle	`lifecycle`	`status`, `status_history[]`	Lifecycle state tracking with transitions.
Lifecycle	`renewable`	`effective_date`, `expiration_date`, `renewal_date`, `auto_renew`	Renewal and expiration tracking for time-limited entities.
Compliance	`auditable`	`audit_log[]`, `last_audit_date`, `next_audit_date`, `audit_status`	Audit trail and compliance tracking.
Compliance	`certified`	`certifications[]`	Certification and accreditation tracking.
Compliance	`regulated`	`regulations[]`	Regulatory compliance tracking.
Geographic	`located`	`location` (address, city, state, country, postal_code, coordinates)	Physical location data.
Geographic	`bounded`	`boundary` (type, coordinates, area_unit, area_value)	Geographic boundary and area data.
Stakeholder	`owned`	`owner`, `steward`	Ownership and responsibility tracking.
Stakeholder	`contactable`	`contacts[]`	Contact information.
Financial	`budgeted`	`budget` (allocated, spent, remaining, currency, fiscal_year), `cost_center`	Budget and financial tracking.
Financial	`transactional`	`transactions[]`	Transaction and payment tracking.
Temporal	`scheduled`	`schedule` (start_date, end_date, recurrence, timezone)	Scheduling and calendar integration.
Temporal	`seasonal`	`season`, `cycle_start`, `cycle_end`, `cycle_type`	Seasonal and cyclical timing.
Measurement	`measured`	`measurements[]`	Quantitative measurement data.
Measurement	`scored`	`scores[]`	Scoring and rating data.
Classification	`categorized`	`category`, `subcategory`, `taxonomy[]`	Hierarchical categorization.
Classification	`tagged`	`tags[]`, `labels`	Flexible tagging.
Asset	`inventoried`	`inventory_id`, `serial_number`, `quantity`, `unit`, `location_code`, `last_inventory_date`	Inventory tracking.
Asset	`maintainable`	`maintenance_schedule`, `last_maintenance`, `next_maintenance`, `maintenance_log[]`	Maintenance scheduling.
Quality	`reviewed`	`review_status`, `reviewer`, `review_date`, `review_notes`, `approval_chain[]`	Review and approval workflow.
Quality	`quality_controlled`	`qc_status`, `qc_checkpoints[]`	Quality control checkpoints.

Domain ontologies define additional traits of their own and compose any of the above into their entity types.

Ontology file schema

Each ontologies/<name>.ontology.yaml declares the following top-level blocks.

ontology:
  id: <ontology-id>
  version: "<semver>"
  description: "<one sentence>"
  extends:              # optional
    - <parent-ontology-id>
  schema_url: >-        # optional
    https://mif-spec.dev/schema/ontology/ontology.schema.json

namespaces:
  <name>:
    description: "..."
    type_hint: semantic | episodic | procedural
    children:
      <child>:
        description: "..."
        type_hint: semantic | episodic | procedural

traits:
  <trait-name>:
    description: "..."
    fields:
      <field>:
        type: string | number | boolean | array | object
        # plus format, enum, items, properties as applicable

entity_types:
  - name: <entity-type-name>
    description: "..."
    base: semantic | episodic | procedural
    traits:
      - <trait-name>
    schema:
      required:
        - <field>
      properties:
        <field>:
          type: <type>

relationships:
  <relationship-name>:
    description: "..."
    from: []
    to: []
    symmetric: true | false

discovery:
  enabled: true | false
  confidence_threshold: <number>
  content_patterns: [...]
  file_patterns: [...]

Block fields

Block	Field	Type	Notes
`ontology`	`id`	string	Stable ontology identifier.
`ontology`	`version`	string	SemVer, quoted.
`ontology`	`description`	string	One sentence.
`ontology`	`extends`	list of ontology ids	Optional. Names parent ontologies this ontology builds on.
`ontology`	`schema_url`	string	Optional. Resolvable URL of `ontology.schema.json`.
`namespaces`	`<name>`	map	`description`, `type_hint`, optional `children`.
`traits`	`<trait-name>`	map	`description` and a `fields` map.
`entity_types`	`name`	string	Entity type identifier.
`entity_types`	`base`	enum	One of `semantic`, `episodic`, `procedural`.
`entity_types`	`traits`	list	Trait names composed into the type.
`entity_types`	`schema`	map	JSON Schema fragment with `required` and `properties`.

Inheritance via `extends`

extends names one or more parent ontology ids. The base ontologies are mif-base (the root), shared-traits, engineering-base, and mif-generic; the thirteen domain ontologies build on these.

Inherited through `extends`	Not inherited
`traits`	`entity_types`
`relationships`
`namespaces`
`discovery` patterns

Each ontology declares its own entity_types, composing inherited traits. When multiple parents are listed, a later extends entry overrides an earlier one on conflict.

The extends declared by each domain ontology:

Ontology	`extends`
`biology-research-lab`	`mif-base`, `shared-traits`
`data-engineering`	`engineering-base`
`market-research`	`mif-base`, `shared-traits`
`mif-docs`	`mif-base`
`observability`	`engineering-base`, `mif-generic`
`platform-engineering`	`engineering-base`
`psycholinguistics`	`engineering-base`, `mif-generic`
`regenerative-agriculture`	`mif-base`, `shared-traits`
`regenerative-agriculture-research`	`engineering-base`, `mif-generic`
`regulatory-legal`	`mif-base`, `shared-traits`
`scientific`	`mif-base`, `shared-traits`
`software-engineering`	`engineering-base`
`software-security`	`mif-base`, `shared-traits`
`trend-analysis`	`mif-base`, `shared-traits`

shared-traits and mif-generic extend mif-base; engineering-base extends mif-base and shared-traits; mif-base declares no extends.

Declaring conformance in a memory

A memory references the ontology it conforms to with an ontology block (id, version, optional uri) and a namespace path. The same declaration works in YAML frontmatter and in the JSON-LD projection.

ontology:
  id: mif-base
  version: "1.0.0"
  uri: https://mif-spec.dev/schema/ontology/ontology.schema.json
namespace: _semantic/decisions

The namespace value is one of the triad child paths (or a domain namespace) the declared ontology defines.

Tooling and schema pointers

Item	Value
Source of record	`ontologies/<name>.ontology.yaml` (hand-authored).
Projection	`ontologies/<name>.ontology.jsonld` (generated, committed beside the YAML).
Generator	`scripts/yaml2jsonld.py --all --path <dir>` in the `modeled-information-format/MIF` spec repo.
Validators	`scripts/validate-ontologies.py --path <dir>`, `scripts/validate-namespaces.py --path <dir>` (in the MIF spec repo; `--path` points at this repo’s `ontologies/` directory, since MIF authors no ontology content of its own — ADR-018). `scripts/test_subtype_of.py` also lives in MIF but only exercises its own hardcoded fixtures; it does not check this corpus and takes no `--path`.
Canonical schema	`ontology.schema.json`, `$id` `https://mif-spec.dev/schema/ontology/ontology.schema.json`.

This repository holds the corpus source. The generator, validators, and canonical ontology.schema.json live in the modeled-information-format/MIF spec repo, not here.

Ontology Corpus Reference

Ontology Corpus Reference

Catalog

Namespace triad

Trait catalog

Core traits (mif-base)

Shared traits (shared-traits)

Ontology file schema

Block fields

Inheritance via extends

Declaring conformance in a memory

Tooling and schema pointers

Related

Core traits (`mif-base`)

Shared traits (`shared-traits`)

Inheritance via `extends`