Specification · § 6 · Conformance
Three levels of conformance.
Implementations attest at L1 or L2 by publishing a Conformance Statement. L3 requires verified review and is the prerequisite for use of the AXL™ certification mark.
- Normative
- § 6 of the AXL Reference v1.0
- Effective
- v1.0 Draft
- Process owner
- axlspec.org editorial board
§ 6.1Level definitions
| Level | Requirement | Attestation | Mark |
|---|---|---|---|
| L1 — Functional | Required clauses of §5.1–§5.4 across all four pillars. | Self-attested via Conformance Statement. | None — “AXL-conformant L1” may be used descriptively. |
| L2 — Production | L1 plus published reproduction of Appendix A benchmarks. | Self-attested with audit-ready artifacts. | None — “AXL-conformant L2” may be used descriptively. |
| L3 — Reference | L1 + L2 + Recommended clauses across all four pillars. | Verified review by axlspec.org against the full specification. | AXL™ certification mark, per the trademark policy. |
§ 6.2Conformance Statement
A Conformance Statement is a public document filed by an implementer attesting to specific clauses of the specification. For L1 and L2, attestation is self-published and does not require axlspec.org review. The statement must include:
- The implementer's legal entity.
- The product or platform under attestation, including version.
- The conformance level claimed.
- Clause-by-clause attestation against §5 (Required for L1; Required + Recommended for L3).
- For L2: a link to the published reproduction of Appendix A benchmarks under the AXL test methodology.
- A statement of the period for which the attestation is valid (default: one major or minor version cycle of the spec).
Conformance Statement template: a fillable template is forthcoming in the project repository. Until publication of the template, self-attestations may be drafted against the clauses of § 5 directly.
§ 6.3Verified certification (L3)
L3 conformance requires verified review by the axlspec.org reviewer panel. The process is documented at /certification and entails:
- Submission of the implementer's Conformance Statement and supporting artifacts.
- Reviewer-panel evaluation against the published spec, including reproducible execution of the conformance test suite.
- Inspection of the §7 agentic interface surface for semantic conformance.
- Publication of the reviewer report at
axlspec.org/certified/[vendor]. - Issuance of the AXL™ certification mark license, valid for the attested version cycle.
§ 6.4Re-attestation
Conformance is per-version. Minor versions of the specification (v1.1, v1.2) require a clause-level re-attestation; the implementer may file an updated Conformance Statement noting deltas. Major versions (v2.0) require a fresh attestation from L1.
§ 6.5Withdrawal
An implementer may withdraw a Conformance Statement at any time by opening a withdrawal PR. axlspec.org may revoke an L3 certification on the public record where the reviewer panel determines the implementation has materially diverged from the attested state. Revocation triggers the trademark-use cure period described in §4 of the trademark policy.
L1 and L2 Conformance Statements may be filed against the current Working Draft. L3 review is conducted against published versions. The editorial contact for the certification programme is conformance@axlspec.org.