An Organizational Schema Theory demonstration

A whole coffee shop,
specified as tests

Not a business plan. A test suite you can run.

Spectra Coffee is a synthesized specialty coffee shop in Berlin — a purpose-built reference implementation. Every promise made to the customer traces down to a supplier requirement, and a CI/CD pipeline checks the whole chain on every commit. The same shop is measured from the outside in the Spectral Brand demo.

The idea in three sentences

The business is designed backward from customer experience: what the customer must experience is written first, as acceptance tests.
Contracts are separated from procedures: what a process must achieve is a test; how it is done today is an implementation that can be swapped without touching the test.
The whole specification is version-controlled and validated by CI/CD — change one value and the pipeline shows which customer promises are affected.

Six levels, one chain

Designed top-down (experience to sourcing), validated bottom-up (sourcing to experience). Each level is a set of YAML files in the repository.

L0 · Customer Experience Contract

Acceptance tests. What the customer must be able to feel, notice, and rely on — written before anything operational exists.

perception/experience-contracts.yaml

L1 · Signal Requirements

Integration tests. Which perceptual signals the operation must emit, expressed in the 8 SBT dimensions.

perception/signal-requirements.yaml

L2 · Process Contracts

Unit tests. What each process must achieve — not how. Roughly 75% of a specification is executor-invariant.

processes/milk-steaming.yaml

L3 · Procedures

The implementation. How the contract is satisfied today, by a human, a machine, or a hybrid.

processes/milk-steaming.yaml#procedure

L4 · Input Specifications

Dependencies. The materials, equipment, training, and data the procedures require.

products/cappuccino.yaml#inputs

L5 · Sourcing Requirements

Infrastructure. Supply chain and supplier qualification — the bottom of the cascade.

products/signature-blend.yaml#sourcing

Change one value. Watch the chain react.

The milk-steaming process contract pins steam temperature. Move it and see which levels of the cascade hold and which break — this is what the validation pipeline does on every commit. (Illustrative values; the real contracts are in the repo.)

Steam temperature

L5 Dairy supplier qualification holds

L4 Whole milk, 3.5% fat, ≤4°C on intake holds

L3 Steaming procedure (barista, wand) holds

L2 Contract: microfoam texture, 60–68°C holds

L1 Signal: visible craft quality holds

L0 Experience: “the cappuccino arrives silky, never scalded” holds

All six levels satisfied. The commit would pass.

What is actually in the repository

25 YAML files 6 products 4 processes 2 compliance frameworks CI/CD pipeline

spectra-coffee/
  organization.yaml            # identity, roles, values
  brand/                       # signals, 8 SBT dimensions
  products/                    # espresso ... signature-blend
  processes/                   # contracts + procedures
  compliance/                  # constraint contracts (EU 852/2004)
  perception/                  # L0 acceptance + L1 integration tests
  locations/berlin-mitte/      # a fork: same tests, local values

Run it yourself:

git clone https://github.com/spectralbranding/orgschema-demo
pip install orgschema-framework
orgschema-validate spectra-coffee/

Fork, don’t franchise

Copy the test suite — the experience contracts and process contracts — then rewrite the implementation for your context. Your business, the same acceptance criteria discipline.

Reference implementationorgschema-demo Validator CLIorgschema-framework Why it worksTheory The outside viewSpectral Brand demo