Contract Chaining for Cross-Pipeline Composition

When composing multiple pipelines in sequence, the output contract of one pipeline must be structurally compatible with the input expectations of the next. Wave provides shared contract schemas to make these handover points explicit and validated.

Shared Schemas

Shared schemas live in .wave/contracts/shared-*.schema.json and are designed to be referenced by multiple pipelines:

Schema	Purpose	Used by
shared-findings.schema.json	Standardized audit/analysis findings	All audit-* pipelines
shared-review-verdict.schema.json	Review outcome with structured verdict	ops-pr-review, ops-pr-review-core

shared-findings

Array of findings with type, severity, package, file, item, description, evidence, and recommendation. Any pipeline that produces analysis results should use this schema so downstream aggregation or triage steps can consume them uniformly.

shared-review-verdict

Structured review output with verdict (APPROVE / REQUEST_CHANGES / COMMENT / REJECT), summary, findings array, pr_url, and reviewed_at. Enables composition patterns like implement-review-triage loops where the verdict drives conditional routing.

Composition Example

The impl-review-loop pipeline chains three sub-pipelines:

impl-issue-core  -->  wave-land  -->  ops-pr-review-core
     |                    |                  |
  (implements)      (creates PR)      (reviews, produces verdict JSON)
                                             |
                                    verdict == 'APPROVE'? --> done
                                             |
                                          fix loop

The ops-pr-review-core summary step produces .wave/output/review-verdict.json validated against shared-review-verdict.schema.json. The loop condition reads {{ review-fix.output.verdict == 'APPROVE' }} from this structured output.

Naming Conventions

• shared-*.schema.json -- schemas intended for cross-pipeline use
• <domain>.schema.json -- schemas specific to a single pipeline family (e.g., bug-investigation.schema.json for hotfix/bugfix pipelines)
• Avoid generic names like findings.schema.json -- prefix with the domain to prevent confusion

Creating New Shared Schemas

1. Define the schema in .wave/contracts/shared-<name>.schema.json
2. Reference it in pipeline steps via schema_path:
3. Ensure both the producing and consuming pipelines agree on the schema
4. Use on_failure: skip during development, graduate to retry when stable