Northstar T1 - Wire determinism

Northstar T1 guarantees that Strata is wire-deterministic across languages.

If a Strata value is encoded on one system, transmitted as canonical bytes, and decoded on another system implemented in a different language, the resulting canonical bytes and hash must be identical.

If this guarantee fails, Strata is not wire-safe.

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What Northstar T1 guarantees

Northstar T1 asserts the following invariant:

A Strata value encoded in one language, decoded in another, and re-encoded must produce identical canonical bytes and identical hashes.

This guarantee applies regardless of:

• Programming language

• Runtime

• Platform

• Internal data representations

Only canonical bytes matter.

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What crosses the boundary

In Northstar T1, only canonical bytes cross the system boundary.

Specifically:

• The backend emits canonical Strata Core Binary bytes

• The frontend receives those bytes

• The frontend decodes them into its own in-memory model

• The frontend re-encodes them canonically

• Hashes are compared byte-for-byte

No structured data, schemas, or ASTs are transmitted.

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What is explicitly forbidden

Northstar T1 forbids:

• Sharing encoding or decoding logic

• Transmitting JSON, ASTs, or structured payloads

• Normalizing values during transport

• Reconstructing values from semantic hints

• Hashing anything other than canonical bytes

If any of these occur, the test is invalid.

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Why T1 exists

Many formats appear interoperable but fail silently when:

• Map ordering differs

• Integer encodings vary

• Language-specific defaults leak in

• Hashes depend on internal structure

Northstar T1 exists to prove that Strata has exactly one meaning on the wire, regardless of language.

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Failure meaning

If Northstar T1 fails, it means one of the following is true:

• Canonical encoding is inconsistent

• Decoding allows non-canonical interpretation

• Re-encoding is not strictly canonical

• Hashing is not computed over canonical bytes

• Cross-language behavior has diverged

Any of these is a critical failure.

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Relationship to the core spec

The core specification defines how values are encoded canonically.

Northstar T1 verifies that those rules survive real cross-language usage without dilution.

It is the first and lowest Northstar. All higher Northstars assume T1 holds.

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Stability guarantee

Once Northstar T1 is finalized:

• Its behavior must never change

• All future versions of Strata must satisfy it

• Any new feature must preserve this invariant

If T1 ever breaks, Strata must bump its major version and explicitly declare the break.

Northstar T1 is non-negotiable.