spec(overview): add prominent unofficial/AI-authored provenance callout

The book's first page previously claimed the spec was "the
authoritative definition of the wire format" derived from the
firmware. That misrepresents the project's stance. Replace the
existing "Status" block with a more honest "Status and Provenance"
block that mirrors the README disclosure:

- This is an unofficial, independent project — NOT part of the
  upstream MeshCore project, not affiliated, not endorsed.
- Primarily AI-authored (Claude / Opus 4.x) under Stephen Waits's
  direction, with human proofreading and editing.
- The upstream MeshCore C++ firmware is the source of truth;
  this spec is downstream. CHANGELOG records the upstream commit
  hash per pass.
- DongLoRa observations refine the spec but never override
  upstream.
- The corpus is a useful signal but not a substitute for
  cross-checking against upstream firmware.

Visible to anyone landing on https://swaits.github.io/meshcore-spec/
or reading the rendered overview chapter.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
swaitsandClaude Opus 4.7 committed 2026-05-12 09:43:18 -06:00
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## Section 0: Overview
### Status
### Status and Provenance
This document specifies the MeshCore mesh networking protocol as implemented in
the [reference firmware](https://github.com/meshcore-dev/MeshCore). It is
derived from the source code and official documentation, and serves as the
authoritative definition of the wire format for conformance testing.
> **This is an unofficial, independent specification.** It is **not** part of
> the upstream [MeshCore project](https://github.com/meshcore-dev/MeshCore),
> not affiliated with or endorsed by its maintainers, and not authored by
> them. Read this section before relying on the spec for anything
> load-bearing.
This document was primarily written by an AI (Claude, by Anthropic — mostly
the Opus 4.x family) under the direction of Stephen Waits, with human
proofreading and editing on top. Substantive edits — additions, audit passes,
errata fixes — are produced through model-driven analysis of the upstream
MeshCore C++ source and reviewed before commit.
The **upstream MeshCore C++ firmware is the source of truth** for all
protocol behavior. This spec is downstream and derivative. Whenever the spec
and the upstream C++ disagree, **upstream wins** — and a fix to this spec is
filed against this repo, not against MeshCore. Each substantive change in
[CHANGELOG.md](https://github.com/swaits/meshcore-spec/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md)
records the upstream commit hash it was validated against.
Refinements have also been driven in part by observations from building
DongLoRa firmware and apps against live MeshCore deployments. Where DongLoRa
behavior diverges from upstream, this spec follows upstream and treats the
DongLoRa side as a follow-up bug, not a spec change.
Conformance against the [test corpus](https://github.com/swaits/meshcore-spec/tree/main/corpus)
is a useful signal but **not a substitute** for cross-checking against
upstream firmware. If you find a divergence from upstream, please
[file an issue](https://github.com/swaits/meshcore-spec/issues) — that is
exactly the kind of report this project exists to catch.
### Scope