generated: '2026-07-31'
method: searched
source:
- https://github.com/ards-project/ard-spec/tree/main/conformance
- https://github.com/ards-project/ard-spec/blob/main/.github/workflows/conformance.yml
type: Conformance
note: 'ARD ships something most standards do not: an official, zero-dependency conformance CLI that validates
  both a manifest and a live registry, wired into CI. Everything measured in adoption/ was run through
  it. That is a genuine strength — and it is also how the specification''s internal contradictions became
  visible, because the tool disagrees with the documentation in two places.'
programme:
  certification: null
  self_certification: true
  machine_readable_results: false
  public_results_register: null
tool:
  name: conformance-test
  version: 0.5.0
  language: Python, zero dependencies (optional jsonschema for strict schema checks)
  modes:
  - manifest <file|url>
  - registry <base_url>
  ci: GitHub Actions workflow in the spec repo
  local_copy: conformance/bin/conformance-test
checks_enforced_by_tool:
- manifest parses as JSON
- strict JSON Schema validation when jsonschema is installed
- identifier matches urn:air:<publisher>[:<namespace>]:<agent-name>
- exactly one of url or data per entry (value-or-reference)
- representativeQueries sizing
- media type is one of the standard discovery types (warning)
- no root-level collections array (critical)
- 'registry: POST /search returns a results list'
- 'registry: GET /agents returns an items array'
- 'registry: POST /explore returns a facets object'
gaps:
- The tool is the only conformance authority and it is not versioned with the spec — it declares 0.5.0
  against a v0.9 specification.
- Three of the nine publishers found in the wild return 403 to the tool's default HTTP client, so a publisher
  cannot be tested over the wire without spoofing a browser — and neither can a crawler, which is the
  mechanism the whole standard depends on.
- No conformance result is published anywhere, by anyone, in machine-readable form.