Linkable policy modules for constructing end-to-end Policy workflows

[anvabr]

Problem description

Existing Policy design and creation process in Guardian presents a challenge for practical use:

• significant number of different types of elements (blocks) with many options and types of values create combinatorial explosion of complexity
• the basic building block concepts of Policy definition language can be viewed as too "technical" for Environmental industry subject matter experts
• Guardian provides no guidance for policy authors who are required to proceed by 'trial and error' which is time consuming

Requirements

Create a facility to define 'higher-order' (than blocks) Policy constructs thus enabling the creation of pre-build policy modules which can then be linked together to compose end-to-end policies, without needing to understand the low-level details of 'blocks' and 'events'. The following are other constraints/parameters of this functionality:

• modules have clearly defined purpose and function
• modules have API specification, i.e. ingress and egress events and documents they consume/produce
• modules are published with attribution of the source/author, can be 'imported' and 'exported' from Guardian instance
• modules can be run on separate 'workers/services' within a single logical Guardian instance, enabling optimal scalability setup (i.e. 1a single instance of the module running in one small-powered service for 'onboarding projects', and multiple 'MRV processing' module instances for aggregating data and minting tokens.

Definition of done

• Ability to define, name and publish policy modules as described above
• A number of sample policy modules, based on existing policies, which can be used to construct a simple policy tracking Level 1 and 2 emissions.
• Documentation
• Several (working) modules demonstrating the usage of this capability, possibly based on the existing policies such as iREC, Verra, etc.

Acceptance criteria

Once this feature is implemented, any new user of Guardian (policy author) can compose in 30 minutes a simple demo policy from pre-build policy blocks with the following functionality:

• project definition, and approval by an SR
• manual periodic MRV input
• aggregation of MRV data
• minting of tokens

The user should not need deep understanding of Policy language, only some concepts of guardian and the idea of 'documents' and the concept of 'tokens'.