TT Claude Memory

project_three_track_badging

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descriptionPartner identity is split across three badges (INHERIT Contributor, InheritKit Certified, TT Partner) to balance open-standard credibility, commercial moat, and regulatory flexibility. Decision made Thursday 16 April 2026.

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TT’s partner model separates three kinds of professional identity rather than collapsing them into “partner of X”:

  1. INHERIT Contributor — open-standard recognition. Professional or firm has contributed to the Apache 2.0 INHERIT standard (schemas, extensions, reference data). Public register on openinherit.org. Neutral and uncontroversial for regulated professionals.

  2. InheritKit Certified [Specialty] — commercial validation mark. Professional or firm has been validated under TT’s certification programme. Specialty flags attach at individual level (e.g. “InheritKit Certified — Succession + Trust Drafting + PoA”). Part of the commercial moat — accrues to InheritKit (AGPL+dual), not to the open standard.

  3. TT Partner — signed commercial contract. Revenue share, service standards, exclusivity where granted. Contractual only; not marketing-facing.

Why three tracks:

  • Regulatory flexibility — SRA and similar bodies have rules on commercial endorsement. INHERIT Contributor is safe (open standard); InheritKit Certified may need separate clearance.
  • Institutional endorsers (law societies, STEP, academia) care about open-standard credibility, not commercial endorsement. They see “INHERIT Contributor” and accept it.
  • Commercial moat — partner-validated business logic lives in InheritKit (AGPL+dual), not in Apache INHERIT. A competitor forking the Apache schemas gets the schemas but not the partner-validated rule engines.
  • Same professionals hold all three badges — no pivot needed for seed partners approached under previous “INHERIT/TT partner” framing.

Content flow (InheritKit-first principle applied to partner work):

  • Schema-level reviews → Apache 2.0 INHERIT schemas
  • Business-logic reviews (rule engines, tax computation, faith compliance) → AGPL+dual InheritKit SDK

Partners don’t need to know which tier their content ends up in. TT handles the routing based on whether the content is structural (schema) or computational (business logic).

How to apply:

When future conversations involve partner onboarding, partner outreach, marketing, or licensing questions, remember the three-track model. Don’t default to “partner of X” as one thing. The three-track separation is the answer to most “how do we position partners” questions — pick which badges apply in which context.

Spec references:

  • Roadmap v3.4 §3 (Three-Track Partner Badging subsection)
  • Roadmap v3.4 §7 Lane 7 (two certification streams: software conformance vs professional validation)
  • Partner Model v2.2 (Three-Track Partner Badging section)
  • InheritKit spec v1.6 (v1.6 Update section)

Related principles:

  • InheritKit-first principle (see project_schema_vs_inheritkit_bias.md): in close calls between INHERIT (Apache) and InheritKit (AGPL+dual), default to InheritKit.

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