A lifecycle-aware, stage-specific facilitation model for the front end of systems engineering: the SEBoK
Concept Definition knowledge area (Business/Mission Analysis + Stakeholder Needs Definition). cds
commits SEBoK/INCOSE canon to version-controlled RDF — a docs-as-code, model-view-controller tool that takes
this stage from document-based to model-based SE without losing the qualitative inputs and judgments that
make concept definition real.
It does not invent ontology — it faithfully commits existing canon (SEBoK + INCOSE), grounded so scoping traces forward into later stages (SysML v2). The deliverable is a solution (a system, capability, service, operational change, or outcome — never presumed to be a technology) scoped as a System-of-Interest across its full lifecycle.
v0.1 — a reference vocabulary, exercised with precision. 36 Concept Definition terms — the ~25 SEBoK glossary terms plus in-prose article concepts (MGO, Solution Class, Driver/Constraint, Approving Authority, Stakeholder Register, the need-statement format) and the GtWR need/requirement/Integrated-Set-of-Needs — committed to a SKOS+PROV RDF scheme, dual-anchored to SysML v2 (construction correctness) and INCOSE NRM/GtWR (prose canon, incl. the C1–C15 well-formedness characteristics), with full provenance (the ASoT / boundary-object model), a license-keyed deterministic Typst→PDF view, and a Flexo MMS round-trip. Full multi-stakeholder needs elicitation is v0.2.
- M (Model) — canonical SKOS+PROV RDF, the authoritative spine.
- V (View) — pluggable downstream outputs: Typst→PDF now; OKF / MCP / Markdown later.
- C (Controller) — tightly constrained authoring (Pydantic write-scope guardrails + the AICC loop + the no-fabricated-canon discipline) — traceable and accountable.
Core is local-first Python (rdflib + pyshacl); the render layer additionally uses Typst + Pandoc.
cds never fabricates canon. Every definition is verbatim from a named authority and recorded as a
provenance-tracked boundary object; missing canon is escalated to a human, not guessed. See
AGENTS.md for the full authoring contract and the construction order.
Apache-2.0 for the code/structure (see LICENSE). Verbatim canon text is materialized in the
committed RDF (the M layer) as the hallucination guard; the View is license-keyed — it embeds restricted
canon (SEBoK is CC BY-NC-SA) only when the operator's text_license is compatible, otherwise it cites the
authoritative source instead of reproducing the text. Licenses are tracked, not enforced — the operator
judges compliance.