Manifest Validation

Manifests MUST be validated before consumption by agent runtimes.

Validation Checks

1. Schema conformance — Manifest matches the expected JSON schema
2. Required field presence — All required fields for the declared conformance level are present
3. Value validity — Enum values are from the allowed set
4. Parameter consistency — Required parameters have definitions
5. Safety consistency — High/critical risk operations have confirmation requirements
6. Drift detection — Manifest matches current annotation source (when possible)

Validation in CI

# Generate the manifest and check it against the JSON Schema
- name: Generate and validate the manifest
  run: npx @web-axag/cli generate src --manifest axag-manifest.json --validate

# Check the annotations themselves at a conformance level
- name: Validate annotations
  run: npx @web-axag/cli validate src --level intermediate --strict

--validate on generate is the schema check: the manifest must match axag-manifest.schema.json, which rejects unknown fields as well as invalid ones. axag validate checks the source annotations instead. A build that generates the manifest with @web-axag/compiler validates on every build and fails on error diagnostics.

Common Validation Failures

Failure	Cause	Fix
Missing required fields	Annotations incomplete	Add missing axag-* attributes
Invalid enum value	Typo in action type or risk level	Use values from canonical vocabulary
Manifest drift	A committed manifest generated from older source	Regenerate it, or generate on every build
Safety violation	High-risk mutation without confirmation	Add axag-confirmation-required="true"