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Ecosystem Architecture

Audience: Evaluators, adopters, and new contributors — canonical user-facing architecture.

Which architecture doc?

Read this When
This page (architecture.md) Product/ecosystem overview — Ontologos, OntoCore, OntoCode
Implementation architecture Contributor crate layout and internal modules
Product design / UI platform Shared OntoUI, OntoStudio target, design system
Platform architecture (implementation) OntoUI, WorkspaceStore, focus relay — shipped v0.13
OntoCore architecture Short OntoCore stack summary (links here for detail)

Contributor crate layout: Implementation architecture (internal modules only).

v0.13 ships today: OntoCode (VS Code), OntoCore (CLI/LSP/library), Turtle + OBO write-back, property chain editing, OWL/XML read-only catalog, DL explanations, semantic diff (--pr-summary), incremental indexing, Ontologos reasoning, ROBOT CLI wrappers, WorkspaceStore + cross-panel focus sync, Query Workbench schema browser, configurable diagnostics, LSP semantic tokens (Turtle/OBO). Planned v0.14: plugin host MVP. Planned v1.0: full workflow plugin integration, language SDKs, MCP server. See Platform roadmap. Planned post-1.0: OntoStudio desktop, AI-native workflows — UI roadmap mapping. Canonical capability matrix: What ships today.

External Workflow Plugins (v1.0 target)  ← not shipped in v0.13
├── owlmake (reference design)
├── ROBOT / ODK workflow adapters
└── Future build, validation, doc plugins
          │
          ▼
Applications
├── OntoCode (VS Code)             ← ships today
├── OntoStudio (desktop)           ← planned post v1.0 ([UI spec](ui/ONTOSTUDIO_DESKTOP.md))
├── CLI                            ← ships today
├── GitHub Actions (via CLI)       ← ships today
├── Python / TypeScript SDKs       ← planned
├── MCP Server                     ← planned
└── Future Desktop/Web Apps
          │
          ▼
      OntoCore (ships today)
────────────────────────
Workspace Engine
Parser
Semantic Index
Query Engine
SQL/SPARQL (SQL-like virtual tables)
Diagnostics
Navigation
Refactoring
Plugin Platform (v1.0 target)
Persistent Cache
LSP
          │
          ▼
      Ontologos
────────────────────────
Reasoning
Classification
Consistency
Inference
Explanations
          │
          ▼
OWL • RDF • Turtle • OBO
(SHACL: planned)

Responsibilities

Ontologos

Reasoning algorithms and semantic inference. OntoCore delegates classification, consistency, and explanations to Ontologos — it does not embed a separate reasoner.

OntoCore

Reusable semantic workspace platform: index, query, diagnostics, refactoring, and semantic diff. Consumed by the VS Code extension, CLI, and Rust library. Plugin hosting is a v1.0 design — not installable yet. OntoCore is not a workflow engine; build, release, and QC automation will live in external plugins when the host ships.

External workflow plugins (e.g. owlmake)

Planned v1.0. owlmake is the reference workflow plugin design — ROBOT/ODK-style pipelines without becoming a core OntoCore dependency. Today, ROBOT interop is the ontocore robot CLI wrapper only.

OntoCode

Reference IDE on top of OntoCore. Presents editing, reasoning, and diagnostics in VS Code. Workflow actions (build, release) via plugins are a v1.0 target.

Design Philosophy

Ontologos thinks.

OntoCore understands.

OntoCode presents.

Workflow plugins automate.

Future Extensions

  • Plugin marketplace and discovery
  • owlmake and third-party workflow plugins
  • AI assistants
  • Enterprise governance
  • Documentation generators (via plugin APIs)
  • Visualization tools
  • Collaborative editing
  • JetBrains and web clients

For implementation-level crate layout and diagrams, see Implementation architecture (also docs/design/ARCHITECTURE.md on GitHub).