Every evidence pack contains evidence_pack.manifest.json. It is the machine-readable index every other artefact in the pack hangs from. The manifest is what gets signed; the signature is what anchors the hash chain.The canonical schema lives at roboticks-sdk/schemas/evidence_pack.manifest.json and is JSON Schema Draft 2020-12.
The self_manifest_sha256 is computed over the manifest with signature.value stripped, then the signature is computed over self_manifest_sha256. parent_manifest_sha256 is the previous pack’s self_manifest_sha256.
The manifest schema is semver. Backwards-compatible additions (new optional fields, new enum values) bump the minor or patch version. Breaking changes (renamed fields, removed fields, changed types) bump the major version and trigger a Roboticks release with explicit migration notes.The builder always emits the latest schema. Older packs are not retroactively rewritten — their schema_version is the version in force at their generation time. CLI tools (rbtk evidence verify-chain, rbtk evidence inspect) handle every shipped major version.
rbtk evidence inspect epak_01HF5ZN3T0AAQ8X6BB1A8M2P3W# … or, for an offline packrbtk evidence inspect ./evidence-pack-v1.4.0.zip
The command pretty-prints the manifest, runs schema validation, and reports any mismatches between the manifest’s claimed file paths and the actual ZIP contents. Use this when triaging a suspect pack.