Catalog

The catalog is Tessera's grounded, versioned knowledge store. It's what agents read from and cite instead of relying on the model's parametric memory. Domains (Domains) define how knowledge is ingested; the catalog is the result.

Why a catalog

• Grounding — agents cite curated entities, so claims are traceable to a source.
• Versioning — the catalog is promoted as versions; a run reads a known-good version.
• Determinism where it matters — regulatory lookups don't drift between runs.

Catalog content

Curated source material lives under app/content/catalog-content/ as JSON, for example:

File	Source
acsc-e8-maturity.json	ACSC Essential Eight maturity model
apra-cps.json	APRA prudential standards
asic-conduct.json	ASIC conduct guidance
ato-tax-guidance.json	ATO tax guidance
austrac-fcc.json	AUSTRAC financial-crime compliance
nist-ai-rmf-playbook.json	NIST AI Risk Management Framework
scrutineers.json	Scrutineer personas for quorum

A domain's catalog.yaml ingests this content into typed, keyed entities.

The build lifecycle

Populating the catalog runs a per-domain build state machine:

new_version → ingest_all → (synthesis domains) plan_synthesis
            → per-cluster synthesis → validate_version → PROMOTE

1. Ingest — each source is fetched (or read, for static sources) and normalized into entities.
2. Synthesis (optional) — for synthesis-enabled domains, agents derive higher-order entities (e.g. a risk type) from the ingested facts, cluster by cluster.
3. Validate — the new version is checked against a coverage gate.
4. Promote — if the gate passes, the new version becomes live; runs now see it.

Running it: make ingest

# Build + populate all default domains (long-running)
make ingest

# Scope to specific domains
make ingest DOMAINS="cyber-security-risk"

# Raise the poll cap for large synthesis-heavy domains
POLL_TIMEOUT_MIN=90 make ingest

caution

make ingest is separate from make seed and can take several minutes to tens of minutes per synthesis-enabled domain (it invokes Bedrock agents per cluster). It is idempotent and safely re-runnable. Some default domains — notably cyber-security-risk — can exceed the default 60-minute poll cap; the build then continues in AWS but is not promoted by that invocation. Re-run make ingest DOMAINS="<domain>" to finish and promote, or raise POLL_TIMEOUT_MIN up front. Enable Bedrock model access first, and run this after make seed.

Catalog vs seed

Step	What it does	Speed
make seed	Publishes content + compiles ecosystems	Fast
make ingest	Builds, synthesizes, validates, and promotes the catalog	Long-running

A freshly deployed platform has an empty catalog until you run make ingest. Ecosystems still run without it, but agents that rely on catalog lookups will have less to ground against.

See Create a catalog to add your own sources and content.