Prior
Opaque provisioning
Program-scoped Databox URLs without customer identifiers in paths; separate security boundaries per organisation program and consumer relationship.
Capabilities
What Web Civics Databox implements.
Capability catalogue for this project’s work: relationship Databoxes, Smithy, exchange, IPMS, personal vault, CKAN, engines. Solid interop is retained from the open CSS-era starting point; the Databox behaviours below are Web Civics additions and updates. Runtime: Node ≥ 24 (fork era commonly Node 20, now EOL).
Prior in this project
Updated / renamed
Newer wave
Core Solid Databox
Relationship-specific Solid data spaces.
Prior in this project
Solid interop path
Uses Solid HTTP, LDP, Solid-OIDC and WAC so compatible clients work — continued from the open CSS-era stack and composed with Databox authorisation and store integration.
Updated
Mapping Smithy
Formerly Mapping Forge. Registers Institution Profiles, forges opaque mappings, issues holder-bound rotatable connection credentials.
Prior
Two-way governed exchange
Bilateral exchange of signed digital receipts, attestations, and personal records; deliberate consumer submissions in; append-only evidence, supersession links, and disposition state.
Prior
Policy, ODRL & evidence
Record-class, purpose, legal-basis and assurance checks; versioned ODRL permissions/prohibitions/duties; signed receipts and review workflows.
New
Durable registries & WORM ledger
RelationshipMapping, TenantBinding, SourceOutbox registries plus DurableEvidenceLedger and WORM storage audit ledger.
Personal Databox Profile
Person-side vault capabilities (CIV-A01…A14).
Added after the civics rewrite: bridging personal data safes and organisation operational systems so natural persons and small businesses can exchange records directly.
New
Personal vault
Personal Databox Profile for an individual’s own machine, mobile device or hosted vault.
New
Hosting & DNS
Hosting API and DNS clients for bringing a personal or organisation presence online.
New
Household governance
Explicit, limited, reviewable arrangements for shared household records and support roles.
New
Pod continuity & safe exit
Continuity controls and a safe-exit / deadman-switch path so people are not trapped in a failed host.
Operator & industry surfaces
Smithy Admin, IPMS, mobile apps and native edge.
Advancing Solid beyond personal silos: the full operational software stack enabling small businesses and organisations to issue signed digital receipts, manage commercial workflows, and exchange records with natural persons.
Operator consoles Prior
- Smithy Admin (Refine/React) for programs, mappings, events, rights taxonomy and corrections
- Embedded
/smithyPrograms / Mappings / Events UI - Backendless Pages demo with synthetic data only
- Consumer rights workflows: access and correction requests (ADR-0023)
IPMS & org apps Prior
- 60+ industry modules with enable/disable and capability declarations
- Vertical profiles (restaurant, welfare, retail, loyalty, print, trade, …)
- WASM/PWA container with waiter, driver, tradie, print, scorekeeper, referee profiles
- Per-install VC licence binding app, org, device, scope and permissions
Native / Rust Prior
- POS Edge — ESC/POS, cash drawer, QR, local HTTP, IPC
- Cross-platform installer with checksum-verified Node runtime
- Tray supervisor, POS edge proxy, connector sidecar (ODBC/LDAP → RDF)
Optional engines New
- Oxigraph in-process RDF/SPARQL module
- Qualia WASM decision-evidence / migration bridge (licence-bounded)
- Accepted records remain portable Solid RDF either way
Open data
CKAN Bridge — opt-in Pod→portal publication.
An optional microservice for agencies that already run CKAN. It is not required for ordinary Databox deployments.
New
Solid-OIDC read path
DPoP-bound access tokens; short-lived, cached, fail-closed on expiry.
New
SHACL then publish
Fail-closed validation before any data reaches CKAN; non-compliant data is quarantined.
New
Reconciliation
Periodic sweeps detect editor-originated drift and orphaned CKAN datasets.
New
Correction propagation
Databox review dispositions propagate into CKAN metadata and datastore updates.
Assurance
Testing, deployment and compliance decision support.
Testing Prior
- Unit coverage across Databox subsystems (agent, authZ, bridge, IPMS, evidence, ODRL, …)
- Integration tests for live CSS / OIDC / WAC and IPMS paths
- Fail-closed stubs verified — no stub silently permits access
- Adversarial and conformance suites expanded in recent waves
Deployment & compliance Prior
- Docker Compose and Kubernetes manifests under
databox/deployment/ipms/ - Live CSS Components.js preset for demonstration
- Compliance decision support mapped to pinned legislation/human-rights sources — does not self-certify
- i18n surface historically showcased for multi-language operator use
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