Convergence: Ontop topology + Business Context Management — shared entity model

[szverev]

What

Trood Product Engine's Business Context Management and Ontop are converging. This issue tracks the design work to align them.

The convergence

Ontop defines a vocabulary for tech topology (tree: nodes, edges, layers).
Context Management defines a vocabulary for business context (Goal, Constraint, Decision, Principle).

Both live in the same hierarchy: Org → Project → Repo.
Both use a standard vocabulary that's source-agnostic.
Both inform AI recommendations.

The connection

A Goal like 'Increase retention' + a topology node like tree:redis (caching) are not independent — the AI should be able to reason: 'Your retention goal would benefit from session caching; your current topology has no caching layer.'

For this to work, the Goal/Constraint/Decision entities must reference topology nodes, and the topology engine must be aware of business context.

Proposed alignment

Shared vocabulary extension

Just as Trood Tree standardises tech with tree:react, tree:nodejs etc., business context should use a parallel vocabulary:

goal:retain-users
constraint:budget-series-a
decision:railway-over-aws
principle:integrate-dont-build

Topology ↔ Goal linking

• A Goal can declare which topology nodes are relevant to it
• A topology change can trigger a context check ('New node added — does this affect any active goal?')
• AI can reason across both graphs when generating roadmap or recommendations

Questions to resolve

• Should Ontop spec be extended to include business context entity types, or stay focused on tech topology?
• What is the shared data model between Ontop nodes and Context entities?
• How do we version business context entities using Ontop's existing versioning approach?

Design doc

products/context-management.md