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FlowMCP v4

About Convention as a Schema Resource

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Conformance language (MUST/SHOULD/MAY) follows BCP 14 [RFC2119]/[RFC8174] as defined in 00-overview.md. The binding source is the FlowMCP Schemas Specification v4.2.0.

Scope Statement

Section titled “Scope Statement”

This chapter defines the About Resource: a markdown Resource that describes what a namespace (or a selection) does, what it does not do, and which conventions it follows.

The About Resource is a schema Resource, not a namespace route. It is:

  • declared in the schema as a Resource named about in main.resources,
  • a markdown source (.md), not a .mjs module,
  • stored under resources/about/ of the primitive it belongs to (see 19-folder-layout.md).

The chapter has three parts:

  1. The declaration contract — how About is declared in a schema (see Declaration Contract).
  2. The content contract — what an About Resource MUST, SHOULD, and MAY carry (see Content Contract).
  3. The detection and grading of About on the namespace and selection levels (see Detection–Selection-Level About).

Purpose

Section titled “Purpose”

The About Resource exists because consumers — LLM graders, skill authors, third-party tools, dashboards — repeatedly need a uniform way to ask: “What does this namespace do, what doesn’t it do, which conventions does it follow?” A single, conventionally named, declared Resource answers that question without the consumer having to read the schema source first.

This is the guessability argument. It is the deep cause for reserving the name about; the content contract (see Content Contract) is what makes the reserved name worth asking against.

Declaration Contract

Section titled “Declaration Contract”

The About Resource MUST be declared in the schema under main.resources with the reserved name about:

resources.about = {
    source: 'markdown',
    origin: 'inline',
    name: '<namespace>-about.md',
    description: '<one-line summary>'
}
  • source: 'markdown' — the Resource body is markdown.
  • origin: 'inline' — the content is authored as part of the schema’s resource set (inline-normalised on import).
  • name — the logical file name; the versioned file lives in resources/about/ (see 19-folder-layout.md). There is no flat <namespace>-about.md; only the versioned file exists, and the latest-resolution rule picks the newest.
  • description — a one-line summary.

A Resource declared at the name about MUST conform to the content contract (see Content Contract). A schema MUST NOT use the name about for any Resource that is not an About Resource per this contract.

Only the about Resource is grading-relevant; all other Resources are ignored by the grader.

Why a Schema Resource and Not a Namespace Route

Section titled “Why a Schema Resource and Not a Namespace Route”

A Resource technically never lives at namespace level — there is no namespace object to attach a Resource to, only schemas. About is therefore inserted into one schema of the namespace. The grader does not require a particular schema to carry it; the detector searches namespace-wide (see Detection).

Content Contract

Section titled “Content Contract”

The content of an About Resource is governed by the following MUST / SHOULD / MAY contract.

ElementRequiredDescription
Capability summary — what the namespace can doMUSTA short tool inventory in human-readable form: which tools are exposed, what each tool does at a glance.
Limitations — what the namespace cannot doMUSTExplicit limitations. The user MUST be able to learn from the About Resource what they should NOT expect.
Tools with their conventionsMUSTWhich tools follow which conventions (Shared Lists, naming, casing). A pointer to the relevant Domain-Knowledge content is sufficient.
Personas referenceMUSTPointer to the personas (see 12-personas-contract.md) for which the namespace is built. The pointer MAY be a Lens identifier.
Use cases / application areasMUSTConcrete scenarios in which the namespace adds value, written so that a decision-maker can read them without prior context.
Version / freshness metadataSHOULDLast-updated timestamp, source pointers for the inventory (test outputs, manual curation notes).
Background and motivationMAYHistory of the namespace, provider relationship, sponsorship.

An About Resource that lacks any MUST element scores low on the content (non-deterministic) sub-part; the deterministic sub-part (the route-exists check) still passes as long as the declared Resource and its file exist.

Detection (Deterministic)

Section titled “Detection (Deterministic)”

The detector runs as the deterministic sub-part of the about-namespace Area (provider side) and about-selection Area (selection side). It performs two checks:

  1. Is a Resource named about declared in one schema of the namespace (or in the selection definition)?
  2. Does the backing markdown file exist under resources/about/?

If either check fails, the result is about: false and the dependent content grading does not run. For the provider side the detector searches namespace-wide — the About Resource may be declared in any one schema of the namespace.

Consumers

Section titled “Consumers”

The About Resource is consumed by three classes of actor:

ConsumerUse
Skills (see 13-skills.md)A namespace skill MUST reference the namespace’s About Resource. A selection skill MAY reference multiple About Resources.
GradersThe selection-side grader reads the About Resource as the source of truth for personaUseCaseFit reasoning, and as the Domain-Knowledge content for domainConformance.
Third partiesExternal tools (registry dashboards, agent runtimes, IDE plugins) can consume the About Resource as the README of the namespace.

Selection-Level About (= Domain-Knowledge)

Section titled “Selection-Level About (= Domain-Knowledge)”

Every selection SHOULD expose its own About Resource under selections/<selection>/resources/about/. On the selection level the About Resource doubles as the Domain-Knowledge content of the group: it carries the seven mandatory sections defined in 10-domain-knowledge.md. It is graded by the about-selection Area.

Score consequence. Absence of a selection-level About Resource is NOT a Categorical Veto. It IS a score deduction at the group-bound level: a selection without its own About Resource cannot reach the top of the About grading even when each contained namespace has its own About Resource. Because the selection-level About also carries the Domain-Knowledge content, its absence additionally blocks domainConformance from being scored above stale / n/a (see 10-domain-knowledge.md).

Why SHOULD and Not MUST

Section titled “Why SHOULD and Not MUST”

A MUST at the selection level would over-burden small selections. A selection composed of two tools and intended for ad-hoc use should not be forced to maintain its own About Resource — the cost outweighs the benefit.

Why SHOULD and Not MAY

Section titled “Why SHOULD and Not MAY”

A MAY at the selection level would surrender the guessability argument from Purpose. A selection’s About Resource is precisely what an agent asks for when entering the selection; if it MAY be present or absent without consequence, agents cannot rely on it. SHOULD preserves guessability (consumers can ask blind) while still allowing for the small-selection exception (no veto).

Grading Effect

Section titled “Grading Effect”
DimensionDeterminismTierSource (Area)
About Resource compliance (route-exists)deterministicautonomousabout-namespace
About Resource compliance (content quality)non-deterministicautonomousabout-namespace
About Resource compliance (selection content + Domain-Knowledge)deterministic + non-deterministicgroup-boundabout-selection
personaUseCaseFit (consumes About)non-deterministicgroup-boundselection-aggregate

The deterministic sub-part is binary: the declared about Resource and its file exist (pass) or they do not (fail). The non-deterministic sub-part scores the content against the contract (see Content Contract). The mixed-form handling rule from 06-determinism-and-tier.md applies.

Relationship to the Schemas-Spec v4.2.0

Section titled “Relationship to the Schemas-Spec v4.2.0”

The Schemas-Spec v4.2.0 — particularly 13-resources.md — defines the Resource primitive. This Grading-Spec adds the convention that one Resource named about carries the content contract above. The reservation is forward-looking convention, applied by graders that conform to this Grading-Spec.

A schema-validator at v4.2 MUST NOT reject a schema for failing the About convention; the convention’s enforcement lives entirely in the grader.

Cross-References

Section titled “Cross-References”
Section titled “Related”