Stability and Compatibility

Vaylix documents compatibility explicitly. The intent is to keep operational expectations narrow and testable.

Storage Format Policy

• WAL, snapshot, manifest, and backup behavior are treated as durability-critical interfaces.
• Storage format changes must be called out explicitly in release notes.
• On-disk corruption, continuity mismatch, or manifest mismatch must fail closed rather than partially recover.
• Backward restore support, when present, is documented per release line rather than implied indefinitely.

Protocol Compatibility Policy

• VTP is versioned explicitly.
• Startup negotiation is the protocol boundary for compatibility decisions.
• Request and response shape changes must either remain compatible within the negotiated version or require an explicit protocol-version change.
• Cluster-internal compatibility assumptions must be documented when mixed-version operation is not supported.

Versioning Guarantees

• Release notes are the source of truth for compatibility-impacting behavior.
• New operational guarantees must be documented before they are claimed on the landing page or in reference docs.
• Non-goals remain part of the compatibility contract; unsupported behavior is not treated as soft support.
• Experimental or evolving areas should be described narrowly and without forward-compatibility claims unless those guarantees are already implemented.