Explanation & Concepts

Understanding-oriented documentation that explains how and why Dossier works. A dossier is a skill — a reusable instruction set an AI executes — with trust, versioning, and cross-tool portability built in; these docs explain what that adds and why it matters.

Core Concepts

• Isn’t a dossier just a skill? - How dossiers relate to skills, and the trigger-skill pattern
• Security Model - Understanding Dossier’s security approach
• FAQ - Frequently asked questions

Key Topics

Security & Trust

• Why cryptographic verification matters
• Checksum vs. signature verification
• Trust models and key management
• Threat mitigation strategies

Architecture & Design

• Why Markdown for automation
• The role of frontmatter metadata
• Immutable vs. mutable state
• Design philosophy and principles

Use Cases

• DevOps automation
• Data science workflows
• Security auditing
• Documentation as code

Philosophy

Dossier takes a skill and adds what makes it safe to share:

• Trust: cryptographic signatures + checksums, verified before execution
• Versioning: semantic versions you can pin and upgrade deliberately
• Distribution: a registry that makes skills discoverable and installable
• Portability: human-readable Markdown that runs on any LLM tool — vendor-neutral
• Open standard: community-driven, no heavy infrastructure

Related Reading

• Protocol Reference - Technical details
• Architecture Overview - System design
• Security Documentation - In-depth security analysis
• Infrastructure Lessons — diagnosed failures worth not repeating: OIDC claims, SSM decryption, Neon quotas, publishing pitfalls

Rendered from docs/explanation/README.md in the repository. Edit it there.