Architecture and ownership

These explanations build a maintainer’s mental model of the current OpenHCS-owned architecture: where declarations live, how compilation lowers them, and which runtime boundary consumes each result. Generic behaviour provided by a first-party dependency is explained by that package; OpenHCS pages discuss only the integration boundary and cross-package invariants.

For exact supported imports and call signatures, use Public API orientation.

Start with Architecture quick start. It routes desktop, Python, CellProfiler, and MCP users into the same declaration-to-runtime model. Continue with System overview for the expanded system path.

Architecture front door

• Architecture quick start

Declaration and compilation

• System overview
• Nominal ownership and registry strategies
• Abstraction lattices: one owner or a mirror?
• Axes, grouping, and processing semantics
• Source model
• Artifact contracts and planning
• Pipeline compilation

Runtime

• Runtime values, stores, and projection
• Measurement and runtime equivalence
• Progress and Debugger Runtime Projection System
• Concurrency model
• Execution cleanup guarantees

Interop and application boundaries

• CellProfiler interoperability
• Extracted-package ownership
• Streaming boundary and viewer integration
• External integrations
• Microscope handler integration
• Code/UI Interconversion System
• Serialization boundaries
• Plate Manager services
• Plate Manager batch workflow
• ZMQ Server Browser System
• MCP distribution architecture

Specialized subsystems

• GPU resource management
• Multiprocessing coordination
• Analysis consolidation system
• Experimental analysis system
• Component validation
• Component-system integration
• Orchestrator configuration

Documentation status

Older pages that describe a fixed five-phase compiler, string-keyed step plans, generated CellProfiler semantic sidecars, OpenHCS-owned generic configuration or UI internals, or the deprecated TUI are intentionally absent from this navigation. Their durable content has been moved to the owning package or replaced by a transition page. The hidden entries below preserve those inbound URLs without presenting historical migration material as current authority.

Architecture invariants

• Public pipeline declarations are PipelineConfig plus list[FunctionStep].

• ObjectState resolves declaration configuration once before compiler stages consume it.

• CompilationSession and typed CompiledStepPlan fields are compiler authorities; string-keyed semantic dictionaries are not.

• Callable, module, artifact, source, measurement, and strategy declarations own their respective semantics.

• Generic consumers query nominal registries or shared strategy mixins and do not import concrete backends to discover names or behavior.

• variable_components, group_by, and ProcessingContract are independent declarations with different meanings.

• Runtime workers consume a CompiledExecutionBundle and validated typed runtime values; they do not reconstruct semantic contracts from sidecars.