EtchFacts and providers
Observe the environment, plan explicit changes, and extend capabilities through providers.
Facts describe observed state: a platform, a command, a version, or a provider’s inventory. Conditions use those facts to select actions. An unavailable fact is not automatically false; a required observation needs a valid producer or a clear error.
Establish, refresh, configure
An installer can establish a tool, explicitly refresh a declared version fact, and unlock configuration that depends on that version. Etch reinspects newly active actions and their destination claims before applying them.
Providers implement capabilities
Core includes filesystem and command providers. VS Code and Homebrew are reference plugins loaded only when their source bundles are explicitly declared. Plugins are trusted executable code; review them before loading, including during diagnostics.
Providers declare dependencies, owned paths, fact inputs, refreshes, and shared
execution resources. Homebrew operations share package-manager:brew, allowing
unrelated work to proceed without overlapping package-manager mutations.
The provider authoring guide connects these contracts to the shipped implementations and their tests.