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What Business Instance is
Business Instance configures a concrete runtime. Everything above it (the OS layers and whichever domain packs are selected) is a reusable definition; this layer is where that definition becomes one customer's actual deployment: which packs are enabled, what credentials it holds, what thresholds and approvers apply, what deployment mode it runs under.
Nothing at this layer is reusable across instances by construction. That's the point: a threshold, a credential, or a tenant override is meaningful to exactly one deployment and must never leak upward into a domain pack's own definition, or worse, into the OS itself. This is also where deployment sovereignty is enforced: the mode a business instance declares is a binding constraint on every agent runtime policy within it.
What it owns, and what it does not
Every layer in the architecture has a non-overlapping responsibility. The boundary is as much a part of the design as the capability.
Owns
- Tenant configuration and environment settings
- Credentials and secrets, including external model API keys
- Thresholds and approver mappings
- Domain pack selection: which packs are enabled for this instance
- deployment_mode: cloud-connected, self-hosted hybrid, or air-gapped
- domain_pack_version: the pinned version of each enabled domain pack, changed only through a governed action
- Entitlement flags: which Capability Modules and which Business Instance Extension version are active
Does not own
- Shared platform abstractions themselves
- → Synedrix OS
- Domain-specific entities, agents, workflows, and logic
- → Domain Pack Layer
- Deployment mode validation rules and the air-gapped enforcement invariant
- → Synedrix OS
- The local-model integration interface (Ollama/vLLM)
- → Synedrix OS
Interfaces with
The other layers this one exchanges work, state, or decisions with, and why.
Synedrix OS
the instance declares deployment_mode against OS-owned validation rules, so an air-gapped instance cannot reference a cloud model, whatever the instance itself claims.
Selected domain packs
each enabled pack declares an instance-configurable surface; the instance supplies concrete values within it and may narrow but never widen what a pack declared.
Current specification depth
No single specification is centred on the Business Instance layer. Two documents each cover part of what it owns, alongside the layer taxonomy entry.
The Deployment Model Spec is the authority for deployment_mode itself: the three canonical modes are cloud-connected, self-hosted hybrid (model inference split per agent via Ollama/vLLM), and air-gapped (all inference local, no outbound calls, one declared inbound path through Hookdeck), together with the platform invariant that an air-gapped instance cannot contain any runtime policy with a cloud model URI.
The Responsibility Matrix covers the instance-level ownership rows: secrets and credentials, tenant branding and policy overrides, thresholds, approver mappings, and (under the deployment-sovereignty rows) the mode declaration itself, local model selection, and external model API keys. Its binding-constraint rule is direct: the deployment mode a business instance declares constrains every agent runtime policy in that instance, and no domain pack or OS component may override it.
OS agents at this layer
Layer principles that apply
- Rule of inclusion: a value only ever belongs here if it's a threshold, a credential, a tenant setting, or a deployment-mode choice; anything with cross-instance reusability has been mis-scoped.
Business Instance questions, answered
Short, citable answers drawn from this page.
What is the Business Instance layer in Synedrix OS?
Business Instance is layer 12 of the twelve-layer Synedrix OS architecture, in the "Domain and runtime config" group. Where a reusable definition becomes one customer's actual deployment.
What does the Business Instance layer own?
The Business Instance layer owns: Tenant configuration and environment settings; Credentials and secrets, including external model API keys; Thresholds and approver mappings; Domain pack selection: which packs are enabled for this instance; deployment_mode: cloud-connected, self-hosted hybrid, or air-gapped; domain_pack_version: the pinned version of each enabled domain pack, changed only through a governed action; Entitlement flags: which Capability Modules and which Business Instance Extension version are active.
What does the Business Instance layer not own?
The Business Instance layer does not own: Shared platform abstractions themselves (owned by Synedrix OS); Domain-specific entities, agents, workflows, and logic (owned by Domain Pack Layer); Deployment mode validation rules and the air-gapped enforcement invariant (owned by Synedrix OS); The local-model integration interface (Ollama/vLLM) (owned by Synedrix OS).
The full reference page, with every canonical specification this layer touches, lives in the documentation repository, which is private while the platform is being built.