Summary
Causeway exists so that a data creator can walk from raw to governed
in a single afternoon. This RFD fixes the principles the rest of the
platform has to bend to.
The five principles
- The paved path is the fast path. Any creator who leaves it
should feel the friction, and should be able to tell us why.
- Contracts, not tickets. Every dataset declares its own shape,
stewardship, and policy. If a team needs the data, they read the
contract, not a queue.
- Lineage follows meaning. Semantic, not byte-level. A rename
that preserves meaning preserves lineage.
- RAG, the whole way down. Restricted / Internal / Public. Three
tiers, one masking rule per tier. A taxonomy of fifty is an
admission of defeat.
- AI-readiness is the deck, not the guard rail. Consent,
retrieval rights, export rights declared per dataset, enforced
at the boundary.
What this RFD is not
It is not a roadmap. Roadmap items cite these principles, not the
other way around.