Design partners

Status: open — 0 of 5 cohort-1 slots filled, 0 of 3 independent sign-offs on the v1.0 spec. If you run real AI or HPC workloads and want a say in a format you will have to live with, this is the moment where your input changes the outcome.

A design partner is an organization that adopts NovaFabric in a real workflow before v1.0 and trades regular feedback for direct influence over the spec. It is not a customer relationship — the project has no commercial offering and design-partner status is free.

Why the program exists

The Run Capsule format and the Replay Engine contract are the two artifacts NovaFabric is most committed to. If they are frozen at v1.0 against an imagined user instead of a real one, the project fails — the format will not survive contact with production workloads.

The program exists to prevent exactly that:

Surface real capture/replay scenarios before they arrive as bug reports against a 1.0 release
Stress the schema against workloads the maintainers have no access to — large-scale HPC, regulated data, agent frameworks we don't run
Build a citable adoption record

Freezing the v1.0 spec requires 3 independent design-partner sign-offs. The maintainers' own validation explicitly does not count toward that number. This is the single largest gate on v1.0, and no amount of engineering unblocks it.

The first cohort — deliberately small, deliberately diverse

Slot	Profile	Why this profile
1	University HPC lab running ML on a SLURM cluster	Validates the SLURM runner; HPC is the project's distinct wedge
2	National lab or research institute with multi-cluster workflows	Tests the K8s↔SLURM bridge; brings audit scrutiny
3	AI startup shipping LLM agents in production	Validates capsule fidelity for agent workflows and the framework adapters
4	Enterprise platform team in a regulated industry	Validates the Evidence Bundle and the threat model against real compliance needs
5	Open-source agent-framework author	Validates the spec direction; brings ecosystem credibility

We do not approach any vendor whose product directly competes with a NovaFabric primitive.

What you commit to

Adoption — use NovaFabric in a real workflow within 90 days of joining; provide a written workflow description (kept private); share at least 5 real capsules per quarter, redacted as needed, for spec validation.

Feedback — one 30-minute call per quarter with the project lead; asynchronous feedback on RFCs affecting your workflow within the comment window; a reasonable response to direct spec-review asks, target one week.

Authorization — a named engineer permitted to participate in RFCs and code review on company time.

Conduct — your organization and its representatives uphold the Code of Conduct.

What you get

Influence on the spec

Your feedback is explicitly weighted in RFC review alongside maintainer comments when judging consensus
Requested features get a dp-requested label and rise in roadmap planning
Your representatives may co-author RFCs without being maintainers

Early access — release candidates two weeks ahead of public release, and a direct channel for workflow questions.

Recognition — listed with your logo (opt-in) in the README and on the project website; cited in foundation applications; invited to co-present.

What you explicitly do not get — a discount or revenue share (there is nothing to discount); veto rights (final say stays with the project lead and later the TSC — your feedback is input, weighted input, but input); source rights beyond the public Apache-2.0 license; private features or forks.

How to apply

Email design-partners@novafabric.io with:

Organization name
Your primary use case, one or two paragraphs
A named engineering representative and their availability
Any NovaFabric capability you need or are currently blocked on

The project lead reviews and either accepts, asks for more information, or declines with reasons. First response within 2 weeks.

Not ready to commit an organization? Open a Discussion instead — informal feedback on the spec is welcome from anyone and needs no paperwork.