Specifies data preparation, query processing, retrieval or decision logic, interfaces, scoring where relevant, and fallbacks for ranking. It fixes adoption boundaries and observable failure evidence while keeping environment-specific limits configurable.
Package status: reference context ready for human review. The contract and test scenarios are complete, but no claim is made that an adopting implementation has passed them.
Decision
For Ranking, adopt a versioned relevance contract evaluated on representative judgments. Use one owned boundary, explicit state model, and versioned interfaces; keep policy decisions separate from adapters and side effects. This package is a reference contract: the adopting team must choose numeric limits, providers, jurisdictions, and operational owners from evidence in its own environment.
Scope
- The Ranking actors, inputs, outputs, states, policy or schema versions, and externally visible outcomes described by this architecture block.
- Primary and alternate interfaces, background work, caches, integrations, support paths, and evidence that can exercise the same boundary.
- Adoption-specific configuration, rollout, recovery, and verification responsibilities needed to apply the reference safely.
Outside this block
- Choosing a universal vendor, framework, jurisdiction, numeric threshold, retention period, or service-level objective for every adopter.
- Claiming that packaged scenarios have run against a downstream implementation or that this reference grants legal, security, or accessibility certification.
Contract
- Define query interpretation, candidate eligibility, ranking signals, tie-breaking, filters, and fallback independently of one search engine.
- Apply tenant, entitlement, visibility, and deletion rules before returning hits, snippets, suggestions, facets, or total counts.
- Version source records, index documents, analyzers, ranking configuration, and evaluation sets so changes are attributable.
- Measure quality by intent segment and protect latency, error, freshness, and zero-result guardrails during relevance experiments.
- Document component ownership and allowed dependency direction, including which data may cross each boundary.
- Make synchronous, asynchronous, and batch paths implement the same authority and state invariants.
- Version candidate set, features, scoring formula or model, normalization, business rules, tie-breaks, freshness, and fallback and retain explanation evidence appropriate to the product.
- Apply authorization before scoring and counts, evaluate relevance and harm by intent segment, and guard against feedback loops, feature leakage, drift, and latency regressions.
Implementation guidance
- Start with the domain state and interface contract, then attach adapters, storage, queues, and provider-specific code.
- Model Ranking inputs, outputs, actors, states, invariants, side effects, and evidence before selecting framework or vendor details.
- Store the applicable Ranking contract or policy version with material state so migrations, replay, and support decisions remain attributable.
- Introduce the path behind controlled rollout, compare expected and observed outcomes, and keep a tested recovery route until adoption evidence is complete.
Failure handling and safeguards
- Invalid filters or unavailable required indexes return a clear bounded failure; optional enrichments may degrade only when declared non-authoritative.
- Invalid or contradictory Ranking state is rejected or quarantined; the implementation never guesses a value that broadens authority or duplicates an effect.
- Retries are bounded and use durable identity; after exhaustion, work reaches an inspectable terminal state with an accountable owner.
Verification and operations
- Exercise the contract through each adapter and prove that a failed dependency cannot bypass the authoritative boundary.
- Monitor Ranking success, denial, validation failure, dependency failure, retry exhaustion, and recovery by contract version without sensitive payload dimensions.
- Re-run paired positive and negative fixtures after policy, schema, dependency, migration, or boundary changes and preserve the resulting evidence.
Adoption assumptions
- Names and values in the example are a concrete fixture, not universal defaults; adopters replace them through documented evidence and ownership.
- The adopting system can provide authenticated identity, durable operation or record versions, bounded telemetry, and a controlled path for change.
The executable-looking examples in this package are fixtures and acceptance contracts. Run the collection validator to check structure and metadata, then translate and execute the scenarios in the target repository before recording implementation evidence.