Northstar T3 - Framed streaming determinism
Northstar T3 guarantees that Strata Core Binary remains canonical, deterministic, and hash-stable when transmitted as multiple framed messages over a streaming transport.
Framing may define message boundaries. Framing must never interpret, normalize, or mutate Strata payload bytes.
If this guarantee fails, Strata is not stream-safe.
What Northstar T3 guarantees
Northstar T3 asserts the following invariant:
Canonical Strata Core Binary payloads, when split into framed messages and transmitted over a stream, must decode, re-encode, and re-hash to identical results.
Each frame contains:
A length prefix
Exactly one canonical Strata payload
The payload bytes themselves are never altered.
Why framing matters
Many real systems do not send single payloads.
They stream:
Multiple messages over one connection
Chunked responses
WebSocket frames
TCP streams
Async message queues
Framing is unavoidable in these environments.
Northstar T3 ensures that adding framing does not change meaning.
What framing is allowed to do
Framing is allowed to:
Define message boundaries
Prefix payloads with length metadata
Segment streams safely
Enable multiplexing or batching
Framing is not allowed to:
Inspect Strata contents
Modify payload bytes
Reorder payloads internally
Normalize or validate data
Add semantic meaning
Framing is mechanical, not logical.
What Northstar T3 explicitly forbids
Northstar T3 forbids:
Frame-level normalization
Implicit buffering assumptions
Zero-length frames
Partial payload acceptance
Silent truncation
Hashing framed data instead of payload data
Only the payload bytes are canonical.
Streaming failure modes T3 prevents
Without T3, systems often fail due to:
Frame boundary misalignment
Partial reads being accepted
Accidental concatenation of payloads
Hashing framed data instead of content
Transport chunking affecting semantics
Northstar T3 exists to block these failures permanently.
Failure meaning
If Northstar T3 fails, at least one of the following is true:
Payload boundaries are ambiguous
Framing leaks into canonical encoding
Streaming alters byte-level meaning
Hash stability depends on transport layout
Decoding tolerates malformed streams
Any of these breaks Strata’s determinism guarantees.
Relationship to other Northstars
Northstar T3 builds on earlier guarantees:
T1 ensures cross-language determinism
T2 ensures raw-wire safety
T3 ensures stream safety with framing
All three must hold simultaneously.
Stability guarantee
Once Northstar T3 is finalized:
Its framing rules are frozen
All future implementations must pass it
Any new transport layer must preserve it
If a change breaks T3, it requires a new major version and an explicit opt-in.
Northstar T3 defines Strata’s ceiling for safe streaming transport.
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