Files
wanderbooks/docs/architecture.md
T
swaitsandClaude Opus 5.5 3f20df9700
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config, mcp, gui: specs from sources, spec-blind suites, and the bugs they found
ledger-config: parse gets a sourced spec. A fiscal year starts on the
first of a month (IRS Pub. 538); tax_classification is read by whole
words (Treas. Reg. 301.7701-3, Schedule C instructions; "business corp"
no longer reads as an S corp, "corporation or S corporation" is refused);
duplicate or blank members and shared capital accounts are refused; a
negative or non-grammatical receipt threshold is refused; codes trimmed.
tests/spec_config.rs (65 spec-blind tests, 14 properties), fuzz target
fuzz_config_parse (weekly). Mutation: 55 of 55 viable caught (from 25/38).

The receipt policy moves to ledger-config, with one loader
(effective_receipt_policy) and one decimal grammar, so the server and
the viewer enforce and show the same rule (the viewer had its own: only
expense-like debits, a silent $25 default, and no config.json).

ledger-mcp: a module spec (MCP 2025-06-18 tools, JSON-RPC 2.0, the
operating contract). Amounts in are exactly -?digits[.digits]; a number
that is one account's code and another's id (vendors, classes alike) is
refused, not guessed; the threshold is validated at startup. Fixed:
add_line with a bad class journaled the line before refusing;
profit_and_loss_by_class ignored `class`; aging buckets said "0". A wire
in front of rmcp answers malformed JSON with -32700 and invalid requests
with -32600 and their id (rmcp dropped the first, omitted the id).
tests/spec_mcp.rs (26 spec-blind tests: every tool's result against its
own outputSchema, a random-call state machine checking the journal is
untouched by every refusal, amount grammar, previews, the receipt policy).

ledger-gui: money, accounting, and dollars never round (they rounded to
cents, banker's style); export file names avoid Windows device names,
trailing dots and spaces, empty names, and 255-byte overflow; specs on
attention, history, fuzzy search, and axis ticks.

ledger-core: the lifetime profit_and_loss is renamed unclosed_earnings
(docs/testing.md #3).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GWVo7x3UHw5kwCUaWxiejX
2026-10-14 10:13:05 -06:00

3.7 KiB

Architecture

The one big idea: engine-first, everything is a command

ledger-core owns all accounting knowledge. Every state change is a method on Ledger:

  • add_account — extend the chart of accounts
  • create_entry / add_line — build a draft journal entry
  • post_entry — validate and apply (one-way)
  • reverse_entry — correct via reversal (one-way)

Each command validates before it applies, and each failure is a typed LedgerError variant. There is no other mutation path: struct fields are private, and constructors are pub(crate) where it matters. This is what makes the ledger auditable and what will make the future oracle harness trustworthy — the harness only needs to drive the command surface.

Reports (trial_balance, balance_sheet, unclosed_earnings, snapshot) are free functions: pure, total, and deterministic. Same ledger in, same report out, every time, on every platform. That determinism is the entire basis of docs/oracle.md.

Current crate layout

crates/ledger-core/
  src/
    lib.rs        # crate docs, re-exports, design rules
    money.rs      # Currency + Money (Decimal, checked arithmetic)
    account.rs    # AccountType, Side, Account, ChartOfAccounts
    journal.rs    # JournalLine, JournalEntry, validate()
    ledger.rs     # Ledger: the command surface, append-only log
    reports.rs    # trial_balance, unclosed_earnings, balance_sheet, snapshot
  tests/
    invariants.rs # accounting-law tests + randomized property test
    golden/       # hand-verified expected report snapshots

Dependency rules

ledger-core may depend only on:

  • rust_decimal — exact decimal arithmetic
  • thiserror — the error type
  • chrono — dates (NaiveDate; no wall-clock reads in the core)
  • serde / serde_json — the oracle interchange format

New dependencies need justification in the commit message. In particular: no I/O, no networking, no async runtime, no logging framework in the core. The core is a pure domain library and stays that way.

Future crates (do not create until the roadmap says so)

Crate Purpose Depends on
ledger-store Journal (hash-chained JSONL) + SQLite projection, blob store ledger-core
ledger-import QuickBooks CSV read-only import (bank transactions, chart of accounts) ledger-core
ledger-export Format renderers: CSV, XLSX, IIF journal entries (QuickBooks Desktop) ledger-core
ledger-oracle Cross-check harness: our engine vs other implementations (GnuCash first) on fixture books; diffs are adjudicated, not obeyed ledger-core, ledger-import

Dependency direction is always inward toward ledger-core. Nothing in the core may depend on a future crate. UI concerns (formatting, locale, widgets) never leak into the core; the core speaks Decimal and ISO codes.

Why Rust

Exact decimal semantics, exhaustive pattern matching on the five account types, and a type system that makes invalid states (mutable posted entries, float money) unrepresentable. The storytold pipeline this project is modeled on is Rust + egui for the same reasons; when the UI crate arrives it will be one codebase compiling to native and WASM.

The GUI (ledger-gui)

Read-only by construction: it opens a ledger_store::Snapshot (journal verified and replayed into its own Ledger, projected into a private in-memory SQLite, blobs read through the verifying store) and never writes to the data directory. A loader thread watches the directory and applies appended journal lines; the UI renders an immutable view model rebuilt per change. Statements and series come from ledger-core (reports, analysis); the GUI only arranges them. See plan/gui.md.