Review material. This is exploratory research, not an authoritative service or released data product.

A Life in the UK

A citizen-centred Open Knowledge Format (OKF v0.2) bundle about public services, rights, responsibilities and life events across the United Kingdom, from before birth to death and bereavement.

Status: the 1,814-file population-complete publication, Explore OKF surface and HTML-first AI retrieval layer passed exact-byte and real-browser verification on 13 August 2026. The AI layer was deployed by manual run 31746462699 from exact protected-main merge aa6afca.... Population-complete means reconciled against this project's declared service-family denominator, not every UK public service or every local variation. None of the 293 families has named specialist acceptance; specialist review is not required for 2 and remains required for 291. This is independent exploratory research, not an official service, released data product or source of personalised advice.

The unchanged corpus exposes 24 life-course domains, 48 process groupings, authored narratives, typed official links and governed journey graphs. The additive review surface provides a secure standalone interface, a beginner-readable learning library, small AI-retrieval records and machine-readable evidence without changing the previously tested descriptor or corpus/runtime bytes. Publication remains manual and exact-byte bound. No new URL is labelled verified until its deployed identity and representative journeys pass a cache-bypassed real-browser check.

Start here

Repository shape

Path	Purpose
`research/`	Evidence-backed research, scope and design decisions
`curriculum/`	Beginner-readable educational sequence
`ontology/`	Classes, predicates, controlled terms and validation model
`life-course/`	Chronological spine and cross-life situations
`journeys/`	End-to-end citizen journeys and exception paths
`services/`	Canonical service-family descriptions
`jurisdictions/`	UK, national and local applicability boundaries
`organisations/`	Public authorities and other delivery actors
`evidence/`	Source and claim evidence indexes
`source/`	Authored inputs and immutable acquired source envelopes
`schemas/` and `shapes/`	Family, link-receipt and semantic validation contracts
`generated/`	Reproducible output boundary; never edit by hand
`evaluation/`	Competency questions, journeys and acceptance evidence

Local commands

Install uv. Project dependencies are declared in pyproject.toml and pinned by uv.lock; uv run creates and maintains the local environment automatically.

uv sync --locked

Build and verify the bundle:

uv run --locked python scripts/render_life_course_packs.py
uv run --locked python scripts/render_life_course_packs.py --check
uv run --locked python scripts/build_browser_handoff.py
uv run --locked python scripts/build_browser_handoff.py --check
uv run --locked python scripts/build_okf_bundle.py
uv run --locked python scripts/build_okf_bundle.py --check
uv run --locked python scripts/check_okf.py
uv run --locked python scripts/check_contracts.py
uv run --locked python scripts/check_sources.py
uv run --locked python scripts/check_inventory.py
uv run --locked python scripts/check_service_denominator.py
uv run --locked python scripts/check_corpus_policy.py
uv run --locked python scripts/check_population_contract.py
uv run --locked python scripts/check_domain_registers.py
uv run --locked python scripts/check_life_course_dossiers.py
uv run --locked python scripts/check_authority_registry.py
uv run --locked python scripts/check_rights.py
uv run --locked python scripts/build_large_corpus.py
uv run --locked python scripts/build_large_corpus.py --check
uv run --locked python scripts/check_large_projection.py
uv run --locked python scripts/check_search_acceptance.py
uv run --locked python scripts/build_population_assurance.py
uv run --locked python scripts/build_population_assurance.py --check
uv run --locked python scripts/check_population_assurance.py
uv run --locked python scripts/prepare_pages_publication.py --frozen
uv run --locked python -m unittest discover -s tests

make validate runs the same required sequence. Validation is local-only by default; pull requests and merges do not run remote CI or update GitHub Pages.

Repository-authored Markdown under docs/ can opt into the additive review site with validated publication frontmatter. For a change that affects only nominated documents, their rendered pages and lockstep documentation, use:

BASE_REF=origin/main make validate-documentation-overlay

The command fails closed if the diff leaves the documentation dependency graph. It regenerates the site-document pages, document index and manifests without rebuilding the frozen 293-family corpus. Deployment remains a separate manual exact-head operation.

The generated entrypoints are okf-bundle.json for the reviewed three-slice bundle and okf-explorer.json for the 293-family discovery projection. The large descriptor distinguishes 293 service families from the larger typed concept count, currently 9,757 concepts, and exposes generated semantic and validation entrypoints. Records and static-search results are sharded in 1,000-record chunks so supporting infrastructure remains lazily hydratable. With a local OKF Explorer build at ../okf-explorer/_site, start the no-cache overlay:

uv run --locked python scripts/serve_local_explorer.py --port 8003

Open the small bundle at http://127.0.0.1:8003/?bundle=http%3A%2F%2F127.0.0.1%3A8003%2Fokf-bundle.json or the colour-facet planning projection at http://127.0.0.1:8003/?bundle=http%3A%2F%2F127.0.0.1%3A8003%2Fokf-explorer.json. These are loopback review URLs, not publication URLs. No public URL is claimed until an exact deployed URL passes a real-browser identity and journey check.

Licensing and source use

Repository-authored code, documentation and ontology terms are licensed under the MIT License. That does not relicense third-party material. Official source pages are linked and summarised in original words rather than redistributed, and no page snapshots have been acquired. Dated provider, OGL, CPSV-AP, Open Referral UK and HSDS determinations are recorded in the licensing decisions, NOTICE.md and the machine-readable rights register.

Eligible generated projections are MIT when they contain only repository-authored structure, original summaries, facts and links. Source snapshots remain non-redistributable until an exact source-specific licence decision is recorded. These decisions do not change the separate explicit owner gate for publication.

The reviewed authority refresh is a separate live metadata acquisition step:

uv run --locked python scripts/refresh_authority_registry.py --check
uv run --locked python scripts/audit_source_links.py

It is not part of deterministic offline validation. The refresh transforms official ONS names, codes and dates in memory; the audit stores response metadata only. Neither retains a source response body, geometry or snapshot.

Authority boundary

This project is an educational and navigational knowledge product. It does not replace authoritative government services and must not make personalised eligibility, legal or medical decisions. Every implemented service route must retain its official source, jurisdiction, observation time and limitations.