Draft consultation shape

TLA-SYN — Synthetic nature provenance

Draft orbit: portable provenance pack for surveyed, modelled, generative, and composite landscape assets.

Schema id: la.archive.synthetic-nature.v1 · Spine: TLA-185

Purpose

Define a portable provenance pack so project interchange can state whether an asset is surveyed, modelled, generative, or composite; who created or transformed it; which tools and recipes participated at a metadata level; and how the claim sits beside TLA-185 botanical and site fields.

TLA-185 remains the single field grammar. This orbit profiles lineage — it does not add a rival dictionary. Taxon claims stay on the spine.

Out of scope

Not this orbit	Where it lives
Archive Seal issue / crypto / Stripe	Commercial Archive product docs
Full Workbench recipe binaries	Proprietary product depth
Training weights / model checkpoints	Separate ML / commercial licences
A second plant field registry	Forbidden — use TLA-185

Enumerations (draft — freeze later)

Field	Allowed values (draft)
`nature_class`	`surveyed \| modelled \| synthetic \| composite \| unknown`
`generation.method`	`none \| procedural \| photogrammetry \| generative_ai \| manual_sculpt \| mixed \| other`

Normative intent (when elevated from Draft)

When elevated from draft: any exchange bundle that presents render-ready vegetation as if surveyed without nature_class / disclosure is non-conformant to this orbit.
TLA-185 taxon and site fields remain authoritative for botanical and climate claims; this orbit only adds provenance.
Commercial products may embed richer private lineage; the open pack is the portable subset.

Foundation vs Archive

Foundation	Archive
Publishes the open provenance shape for teaching and citation.	May implement richer tooling and paid workflows.
Does not issue Archive Seal.	Archive Seal remains a separate commercial attestation.

Golden example (illustrative)

Minimal worked example for consultation. Not a production product API. Download JSON · Required-keys schema (Draft). Repo smoke: npm run validate:orbits.

{
  "schema_id": "la.archive.synthetic-nature.v1",
  "schema_version": 1,
  "pack_id": "syn-ex-001",
  "created_at": "2026-07-23T00:00:00.000Z",
  "asset": {
    "asset_id": "optional-stable-id",
    "file": "optional-relative-or-uri"
  },
  "nature_class": "synthetic",
  "generation": {
    "method": "procedural",
    "tool": "workbench",
    "model_or_pipeline": null,
    "human_authored": true
  },
  "lineage": {
    "parents": [],
    "derived_from": null,
    "revision": 1
  },
  "attribution": {
    "creator": null,
    "organisation": null,
    "licence_note": null
  },
  "disclosure": {
    "marked_synthetic": true,
    "viewer_facing_label": "Synthetic / generated asset",
    "notes": null
  },
  "tla185_refs": {
    "record_id": null,
    "field_paths": []
  }
}