10.6. Manifest Fields

1. Manifest Schema Quick Reference

Generated from the top-level keys of bootstrapper/schemas/service.schema.json. See Contributing §18 for nested fields.

Schema-required marks the keys the JSON schema requires. The validator and tests also require support, containers on non-virtual manifests (matching compose.yml), and docs, a sibling README.md or docs_exception.

Field	Schema-required	Purpose
virtual	no	If true, this manifest has no compose fragment
name	yes	Folder name under services/, in kebab-case
label	yes	Human-readable label shown in the TUI wizard
category	yes	Topology category and wizard grouping
doc_extras	no	Optional doc-generation hints
data_flow	no	Runtime call graph (data_flow.calls) used by docs and diagrams
support	no	Support tier (stable, experimental, community, unsupported), its evidence and the tag or commit it was gathered at, the owner, and known limitations
capabilities	yes	Required operator-facing capability and limitation contract
docs	no	Repository-relative operator documentation path
docs_exception	no	Printable reason with an explicit because clause, four substantive words, and three distinct terms
extra_kong_aliases	no	Extra *.localhost Kong hostnames beyond each row's alias
containers	no	Container names in the service family
images	no	Image env var, pinned default image and the container that uses it
sources	no	SOURCE var, default, and allowed values
env	yes	Environment variables owned by the manifest
depends_on	no	Required and optional logical dependencies
exports	no	Documents the cross-service env-var contract
runtime_sc	no	Per-source runtime scale/environment/deploy/extra_hosts slices
runtime_adaptive	no	Per-container adaptive-service descriptors
runtime_deps	no	Launch-time dependency rules (requires / optional / conditional_requires); a missing requirement auto-disables the service
runtime_dependency_tiers	no	Stack-wide startup tier order (the globals manifest only)
rows	no	Box rows this manifest renders