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Specification Overview

Draft v0.1

This page is in draft. Content may change before v1.0.

The ACES specification is organized into five interconnected components.

Components

Component Description Status
Core Concepts Vocabulary, design principles, and mental model Draft
Evidence Schema JSON schema for evidence objects and packages Draft
Control Mapping Linking evidence to framework controls Draft
Scoring Model How compliance scores are calculated Draft
MCP Protocol AI-native query and reasoning interface Planning

Design Principles

  1. Machine-readable first — every part of the spec produces valid, parseable output
  2. Framework agnostic — evidence objects are not tied to any single compliance framework
  3. Auditor friendly — outputs are explainable and traceable to source
  4. Incrementally adoptable — implement one component at a time
  5. MCP native — designed from the ground up to work with AI reasoning systems