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ADR-037: Runner Standalone Boundary

Status

Accepted (June 2026) — records existing discipline; pointer ADR.

Depends on ADR-051 (contract seam).

Context

The runner crates (assay-runner-schema, assay-runner-core, assay-runner-linux) publish to crates.io and are standalone-useful. The standalone-versus-extraction question is already governed by docs/reference/runner/extraction-roadmap.md, which sequences the extraction slices, gates the repository split, defines kill criteria, and states explicitly that standalone usefulness is not the same as repository extraction.

Decision

This ADR does not re-decide the extraction question. It records the invariant the rest of the interop program must preserve: every interop slice consumes the Runner through its published schema (ADR-051 contract seam) and keeps it standalone-useful, so the options in the extraction roadmap stay open. Any move to make the Runner its own product follows that roadmap's gates and kill criteria, not this ADR.

Consequences

  • Interop work cannot accidentally re-couple the Runner into core.
  • The extraction decision stays in the document that owns it.

Non-claims

  • This ADR makes no product, packaging, or repository-split claim. It only protects the option by fixing the consume-via-contract invariant.

References

  • docs/reference/runner/extraction-roadmap.md
  • ADR-051 (contract seam)