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Eco Rules Catalog

The Eco Rules Catalog is a SITM-owned standard for identifying, describing, and organizing software inefficiency.

v0.4.0 - 2026-05-21

Added

  • Formal schema definitions for cost_dimensions, amplification, temporal_behavior, runtime_evidence, and sustainability_priority.
  • Documentation for the new systems-level metadata fields.
  • Migration entry documenting the 0.4.0 schema formalization.

Changed

  • Updated catalog registry version from 0.3.0 to 0.4.0.
  • Updated rule metadata catalog versions to 0.4.0.
  • Promoted the 0.3.0 expansion into a more explicit systems intelligence release.

Compatibility

  • Existing 0.3.x rules remain structurally compatible.
  • Additional rule properties are still allowed so experimental metadata can continue to evolve.

Why it matters

Waste doesn’t stop at code.

It lives in: - images - manifests - scaling behavior - defaults

Making it visible is the first step to reducing it.

What this is

The catalog provides:

  • a shared language for software waste
  • a canonical rule model
  • controlled vocabulary through the registry
  • validation and reproducibility
  • a foundation for tools, education, and certification

In plain English: it helps teams name waste, find waste, and fix waste more consistently.

Because waste is a bug.

Why this matters

Software waste often hides in plain sight.

A little extra polling here. A little oversized payload there. A little retry loop that no one revisits.

At small scale, these things can look harmless.

At real scale, they become:

  • cost
  • latency
  • energy use
  • environmental impact
  • fragility

The Eco Rules Catalog exists to make those patterns visible and actionable.

Start here

New to the catalog?

Read Start Here for the fastest path into the standard.

Core documents

Source of truth

The machine-readable source of truth is:

  • catalog/rules/...
  • catalog/registry.json
  • catalog/schema/...

Generated artifacts include:

  • catalog/master.json
  • docs/catalog/...

catalog/master.json and docs/catalog/... are generated and should not be edited manually.

For contributors

If you want to contribute safely, start with:

For tool builders

If you want to integrate against the catalog, start with:

Releases

  • See v0.3.0 for the current release
  • See v0.2.0 for the first validated standard release.

Because waste is a bug.