Engine

Overview

The Reference Engine executes Intent Computing workflows under deterministic contracts. It turns structured work into artifacts that Conformance can verify and certify.

Concepts

• Candidate run — Engine output under .reference-engine/runs/<candidate-id>/
• Immutable history — samples/reference-execution-001/ must never be written by local Engine runs
• Namespace — CLI surface cellas engine (via @cellas/engine-cli)

How it works

1. Operator invokes Engine through the CLI (or monorepo tooling).
2. Engine executes within Runtime constraints.
3. Artifacts land in a candidate directory.
4. cellas verify / cellas certify consume those artifacts (or starter fixtures) as evidence.

You do not need Engine deep-dives for First PASS—generated projects already ship certifiable fixtures.

Example

pnpm exec cellas engine --help

When learning certification without authoring a new candidate:

pnpm create cellas my-docs --yes
cd my-docs
pnpm exec cellas verify
pnpm exec cellas certify

CLI

pnpm exec cellas engine --help

Monorepo contributors also use packages under packages/engine and walkthroughs in docs/developer/.

Related pages

• Architecture
• Runtime
• Conformance
• CLI
• Product: /product/engine

Canonical monorepo paths: packages/engine, docs/publishing/execution/, docs/developer/reference-candidate-walkthrough.md.

Next steps

1. Quick Start
2. Examples
3. Runtime
4. Reference map