Associations

Experimental. association is experimental: built and tested, but no production deployment uses it yet, and its interface may change. See feature status.

An association is a named, append-only record of who takes part in something and how the participants relate: people, intellects, organizations, tools, other Marina instances, or any other kind you name. It sits on top of existing records; channels, groups, crews, projects and markets stay where their work happens.

Create and join

association create Data Quality Group | People and agents who review the weekly data pipeline
association join <id> | human:alice | reviewer
association join <id> | intellect:reviewer-1 | first-pass checks
association show <id>

The <kind>:<ref> form is open. human, intellect, instance, organization, tool, provider, marina and mesh are conventions, not a fixed list.

Describe relationships

association relate <id> | human:alice | reciprocal | reviews the work of | intellect:reviewer-1
association relate <id> | marina:local | directed | publishes weekly reports to | mesh:data-quality | {"cadence":"weekly"}

The relationship text is written by the participants. Marina records whether it is directed or reciprocal but does not restrict it to a built-in list.

Relationships change by supersession, not by editing:

association revise <id> | <relation-id> | human:alice | reciprocal | pairs with | intellect:reviewer-1

Both versions stay in the record; association show shows the latest one that has not been superseded.

Link existing Marina records

association link <id> | channel:data-quality | discussion happens in
association link <id> | crew:review | runs reviews through
association link <id> | project:pipeline-v2 | works on
association link <id> | market:forecast-1 | tracks forecasts in

Links are claims and may point at remote or currently unavailable records. They do not copy, own or change the linked record.

Leave, branch, and close

association leave <id> | intellect:reviewer-1 | review rotation ended
association event <id> branched | the group split into two review tracks
association event <id> descendant_created | members created a new intellect record
association event <id> dissolved | the review project is finished
association event <id> continued | a later team resumed the group

Event kinds: created, joined, left, terms_changed, observed, branched, dissolved, continued, descendant_created.

Leaving and dissolving never erase earlier events. Current membership is computed from the full append-only history; there is no mutable membership row.

Signatures

When MARINA_FEDERATION_SIGNING_KEY is set, creation, participation, relationship and link records are signed, and association show reports which signatures verify. A signature shows that a record is unaltered and that the signer held the key; it does not show consent, truth, ownership or legal rights. An association works on a single instance without joining any mesh.