The Rubric Sits On Top Of The Spec: A Schema Validator Postmortem

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0500

When you author a stricter enterprise rubric on top of a permissive open spec, the rubric must sit additive on top of the spec — not replace its required-field set with the spec’s floor. Demoting required-field errors to warnings to “realign with the underlying spec” breaks the marketplace gate it was built to enforce.

That sentence is the entire lesson from a multi-hour debacle on April 28th. The rest of this post explains how a confident plan to “realign the validator to Anthropic’s authoritative sources” tore down a working enterprise rubric, what got caught mid-flight, what survived the rebuild, and the NON-NEGOTIABLES section now pinned at the top of SCHEMA_CHANGELOG.md so it doesn’t happen again.

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The Rubric Sits On Top Of The Spec: A Schema Validator Postmortem