frontmattering 0.4.9

Governed frontmatter, freshness tethers, and validate-only runtime gates for agent-facing Markdown

Frontmattering

Frontmattering makes Markdown safer for agents.

It adds governed frontmatter, task routing, body/frontmatter freshness tethers, and a vendorable validate-only runtime gate so an agent can consume a compact brief without silently relying on stale documentation.

Install

python -m pip install frontmattering
frontmattering --version
frontmattering doctor

First-hour path

frontmattering init . scaffolds a starter router under docs/, and frontmattering new creates governed documents. This block runs verbatim in an empty directory (it is executed as a release gate in CI):

frontmattering init . --set-id MYDOCS --title "My docs"
frontmattering new docs/10_GUIDE.md --profile guide --title "My guide"
frontmattering tether update --add .
frontmattering validate .
frontmattering brief .

Already have Markdown under docs/? Add governance to a file you already have with promote (one file per call):

frontmattering promote docs/YOUR_GUIDE.md --profile guide --in-place

Promoting a file outside the selected corpus fails before the file is touched (FRONTMATTERING-AUTHORING-TARGET-OUTSIDE-CORPUS).

For strict freshness enforcement, set validation_profile: trust in .frontmattering/project.yaml, then re-run frontmattering validate . and frontmattering brief ..

Runtime gate

frontmattering runtime pack --out frontmattering-runtime.pyz
python frontmattering-runtime.pyz validate docs --format json

The runtime artifact is validate-only. It does not expose init, promote, new, index, tether update, or authoring surfaces.

License

Frontmattering is source-available. It is free for individual personal use within the scope of LICENSE.md. Professional, organizational, employer, client, CI/CD, hosted, managed-service, platform, consulting, or revenue-connected use is permitted for a 30-day evaluation period under LICENSE.md; continued use after the evaluation requires a paid commercial license.

Frontmattering is not open-source software under the Open Source Definition because professional and organizational use is restricted without a commercial license.

Runtime dependency status is recorded in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md; project notices are recorded in NOTICE.

Claim boundary

A FRESH brief means the current body bytes and canonical trust-bearing frontmatter fields match their mechanical tether. It does not prove semantic summary correctness, human approval, external adoption, or production suitability.

A STALE or UNTETHERED summary must not be relied on without reading the body.

Publication status

This v0.4.9 package closes destructive-output defects: runtime pack never deletes an existing directory and refuses to overwrite a file without --force; parse --output refuses to overwrite its own input or an existing file without --force, and writes atomically; frontmatter-only authoring edits (such as the router task-catalog refresh) preserve body bytes; and the Markdown API path reader is strict byte-first UTF-8. No frontmatter-schema or canonical-model (v0.1.5) changes. Custom license text should still receive legal review before paid commercial sales.