Interfaces

Python, the command line, HTTP and MCP are four transports of one operations table. Each operation has the same request and response documents on every transport that offers it, the same authorisation right, and the same refusals.

Transport	How	Notes
Python	LocalApplication.create(path), .open(path), .in_memory()	in-process; no network round trip
CLI	openflowsheet api --project <dir> <operation> --json …, and the commands validate, replay, streams, project	prints canonical JSON; the exit status encodes the error code
HTTP	openflowsheet serve-http --project <dir>	/v1/... routes; bearer token; loopback unless --allow-remote; --ui adds the read-only web shell
MCP	openflowsheet serve-mcp --project <dir> --token-file <file>	stdio; one tool per operation offered on MCP, with reviewed descriptions and output schemas

solve and reproduce are Python and CLI only; over HTTP and MCP a solve is a job (submit_job, wait_job, get_job_result). artifact_bytes and list_audit are not MCP tools. The full table, with each operation's transports, is generated from the code into the operations table.

Authority

The local Python and CLI owner holds every right. A served project acts for a capability: a grant in the project policy with rights (read, draft, execute, install, policy, publish), budgets and an optional expiry, presented as a bearer token. A request never names its own identity, a revoked grant stops working on the next call, and every call is audited.

The web shell

serve-http --ui serves a browser view of the project — revisions, validation and degrees of freedom, runs and traces, certificates and failure bundles, streams, comparisons and the audit history — that uses nothing but the HTTP operations. It edits nothing: Solve and Cancel are its only actions.

A run's streams screen shows the stream table that get_stream_table returns (the same table as openflowsheet streams): for each stream its total and its phases, where the phases come from (phase_source) and whether the state lies near a phase boundary, phase fractions, flows and enthalpy flows, then the energy summary per unit. Values are in the SI unit the column names. A value the table does not give is shown as — with the reason in plain words, for example a stream whose phase split could not be computed.