Section 29Product Foundation

Explicit non-goals

Defines claims and implementation directions that BeforeMetal deliberately excludes from its committed scope.

Section relationships
IDNameApplies throughNon-goal
NOGOAL-001Perfect realityAlwaysBeforeMetal will not claim exact, universal, or context-free physical truth.
NOGOAL-002Simulation is not universal physical proofAlwaysBeforeMetal will not claim that simulation alone replaces physical evidence when a use case, safety case, certification program, regulatory process, or separately qualified accuracy claim requires it.
NOGOAL-003Certification authorityBetaBeforeMetal will not be represented as safety or regulatory certification evidence without a separate qualification program.
NOGOAL-004Full CAD replacementBetaBeforeMetal will not provide general solid modeling, drafting, tolerancing, manufacturing drawings, or CAM.
NOGOAL-005Full EDA replacementBetaBeforeMetal will not provide complete schematic capture, PCB layout, signal-integrity, or manufacturing tooling.
NOGOAL-006Native CFDBetaBeforeMetal will not build a general production CFD solver into the portable product.
NOGOAL-007Native nonlinear FEABetaBeforeMetal will not build a general production nonlinear FEA solver into the portable product.
NOGOAL-008Native production SPICEBetaBeforeMetal will not require a production-compatible transistor-level SPICE solver in the portable product.
NOGOAL-009Individual rain dropletsBetaMVP and beta rain will not require droplet-resolved impact, film, splash, drainage, or fluid-structure simulation.
NOGOAL-010Photorealism gateBetaPhotorealistic rendering will not be an MVP or beta acceptance condition.
NOGOAL-011ML training frameworkAlwaysBeforeMetal will not replace PyTorch, JAX, distributed trainers, or experiment-tracking platforms.
NOGOAL-012Universal backend parityAlwaysBeforeMetal will not promise identical trajectories or capabilities across distinct mechanics or multiphysics backends.
NOGOAL-013Universal bitwise determinismAlwaysBeforeMetal SHALL guarantee bit-for-bit repeatability only for explicitly qualified configurations. It will not claim identical binary results across every platform, GPU path, extension, or external solver.
NOGOAL-014Hard real-time desktopBetaA normal desktop process will not be described as a qualified hard-real-time HIL system.
NOGOAL-015Multi-tenant cloud platformBetaHosted accounts, billing, multi-tenant isolation, and global distributed orchestration are outside MVP and beta.
NOGOAL-016Unqualified component truthAlwaysCommunity, manufacturer, or assumed models will not be presented as physically validated or independently evidence-qualified without applicable traceable evidence.
NOGOAL-017Extension is not implementationAlwaysA generic backend, adapter, or extension point will not be described as support for a physical capability until an implementation and its evidence exist.
NOGOAL-018Universal model catalogAlwaysBeforeMetal will not claim to ship validated models for every robot, component, material, circuit, or environment; project-specific modeling, evidence selection, or calibration may remain necessary for a claimed use case.
NOGOAL-019Property storage is not simulationAlwaysBeforeMetal will not claim that a constitutive, transport, resistive, dissipative, interfacial, or other engineering property affects a run merely because the property is stored; active support requires a consuming model or solver capability and an explicit compiled disposition.
NOGOAL-020Universal multiphysics completenessAlwaysBeforeMetal will not claim that one model, solver, backend, or release resolves every relevant physical domain, scale, coupling, or failure mechanism at production fidelity.
NOGOAL-021Universal arbitrary precisionAlwaysThe portable product will not require arbitrary-precision arithmetic for every physical value; higher-precision, interval, decimal, or other specialist numeric profiles remain explicit versioned capabilities unless a later qualified product profile adopts them.

Change rationale (NOGOAL-013): The previous wording described unsupported configurations only as exceptions and did not state where a repeatability guarantee may apply. The revised non-goal limits bit-for-bit repeatability guarantees to explicitly qualified configurations and rejects universal cross-platform, GPU, extension, and external-solver equivalence claims.

Change rationale (NOGOAL-002, NOGOAL-016, NOGOAL-018, NOGOAL-019, NOGOAL-020): ADR-0001 makes physical assets and team-run tests optional for the Portable MVP without turning simulation into an unsupported guarantee of reality. Broad property representation and an extensible solver suite are required architectural boundaries, but each active effect still needs a declared consuming capability, validity envelope, and evidence status.

Change rationale (NOGOAL-021): ADR-0006 keeps a versioned route to higher precision without imposing an arbitrary-precision dependency or implying that more arithmetic digits automatically improve an approximate physical model. Bounded wider intermediates used for correct parsing, validation, hashing, or overflow detection are not prohibited.

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