Capability manifest and auto-discovery contract

Evergreen publishes one deterministic capability manifest for humans, agents, and integrations:

evergreen capabilities --json

The output uses the evergreen.capabilities.v1 contract. Its JSON Schema is schemas/capabilities.v1.schema.json, and a complete committed example is examples/capabilities.json.

What the manifest describes

• the Evergreen package and product version;
• supported, experimental, and unsupported capabilities;
• supported detector ecosystems;
• CLI, MCP, Skill, plugin, and CI surfaces and their entry points;
• the shared capability identifiers available through each surface; and
• compatibility rules for consumers reading newer manifests.

Capability identifiers describe behavior, not transport. For example, repository.scan is the same capability when reached through the CLI, local MCP server, Agent Skill, experimental host plugin, or CI. Integrations should compare identifiers rather than infer behavior from command or tool names.

Forward compatibility

Consumers of a v1 manifest must follow the compatibility object included in the document:

1. Ignore fields they do not understand within schema major version 1.
2. Ignore unknown capability and surface identifiers rather than failing the whole manifest.
3. Treat any unlisted capability or ecosystem as unsupported. Absence never means experimental or supported.
4. Reject an unknown schema major version until the consumer explicitly supports it.
5. Use each entry’s status; do not promote experimental or unsupported behavior based on a matching entry-point name.

New optional fields, identifiers, and surfaces using the defined statuses can be added in a compatible v1 minor manifest update. Removing or redefining an existing identifier, changing required field meaning or status vocabulary, or weakening the rules above requires a new schema major version.

Stability and privacy

The command reads a packaged constant and performs no repository scan, network request, telemetry, or configuration write. Identical Evergreen versions produce byte-for-byte identical JSON output. The package’s contract tests validate both the CLI output and committed example against the public JSON Schema and ensure every surface references registered capability identifiers.