APPSTORE-4 — curation and presentation metadata

APPSTORE-4 defines the non-canonical curation layer that sits above the canonical Registry projection built in APPSTORE-2 and persisted in APPSTORE-3.

Boundary

Curation may add categories, descriptions, screenshots, featured placement, sponsorship labels, ratings, review counts and other presentation-only attributes. It may not rewrite service identity, version, implementation, code hash, metadata hash, component type, manifest hash, dependency root, interface hash, active status, block provenance, chain/network identity, publisher/owner identity or verification provenance.

Every composed listing retains the exact canonical registry.VersionRecord separately from curation metadata. A service-ID mismatch between the canonical record and curation metadata fails closed.

Sponsorship

Sponsored placement must carry an explicit non-empty label. Unsponsored placement may not carry a sponsorship label. Sponsorship affects presentation/ranking only and cannot alter canonical provenance or imply protocol endorsement.

Ratings and reviews

Ratings and review counts are presentation metadata. Ratings are constrained to the 0–5 range and a non-zero average requires at least one rating. These values are not Registry facts, audit results, security proofs or trust attestations.

Ranking

The baseline ranking helper sorts by featured status, then sponsorship, then rating, then service ID for deterministic output. This ranking is non-canonical and replaceable by other catalogue clients.

Safety statement

Every composed listing carries a disclaimer that catalogue placement, ratings, reviews, featured status and sponsorship do not constitute protocol endorsement, audit certification or proof of safety.

APPSTORE-4 directly enforces APP-INV-002, APP-INV-003, APP-INV-004, APP-INV-005 and APP-INV-006.