# Capability taxonomy

ModelForge is capability-first: consumers bind to a versioned contract, never to a model or runtime. M9 defines seven estate categories: `TEXT`, `RAG`, `DOCUMENT`, `VISION`, `AUDIO`, `GENERATION`, and `ASSISTANTS`.

Every manifest declares purpose, input/output modalities, stability, resource class, consumers, privacy class, evaluation type, and bounded payload limits. Runtime state is derived from registry relations and is not confused with declared stability.

| Capability | Category | Stability | Evaluation | Resource class |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `rag.embedding@1` | RAG | stable | retrieval | HEAVY |
| `rag.reranking@1` | RAG | experimental | retrieval | MEDIUM |
| `document.ocr@1` | DOCUMENT | experimental | ocr | HEAVY |
| `vision.embedding@1` | VISION | experimental | visual-retrieval | HEAVY |
| `speech.transcription@1` | AUDIO | experimental | asr | HEAVY |
| assistant manifests | ASSISTANTS | planned | llm | EXCLUSIVE_GPU |

`stable`, `experimental`, `blocked`, and `planned` describe governance intent. Operational states such as no deployment, LAB-ready, resident, and blocked are evidence-derived and independently visible through `/api/v1/capability-estate`.

M10 adds scheduling readiness without changing taxonomy or promotion state. A healthy capability can
be `WAITING_FOR_CAPACITY`, and a cold proven deployment can be `READY_ON_DEMAND`; neither condition
means the capability is broken. Vision and ASR remain LAB promotion-eligible and are not promoted by
co-residency evidence.

Project readiness is planning metadata, not an integration claim: ExampleRAG maps to embeddings, reranking and future OCR; ExampleVision to vision embeddings and future OCR/vision assistance; ExampleOps to future general assistance and OCR; Portfolio Assistant to embeddings and a future local assistant.

M11 adds operational identity without changing capability stability. ExampleVision is an active shadow
consumer of vision embeddings and an active LAB consumer of speech transcription. Its OCR relation is
still planned/blocked. `PROMOTION_ELIGIBLE`, `KEEP_LAB` and `REQUIRES_MORE_EVIDENCE` are evidence
states, not new taxonomy values or automatic lifecycle transitions.