Quickstart

A FLUID contract is one YAML file. This page shows the smallest file that validates against FLUID 0.7.5, explains each required block, and shows how to validate it.

The smallest valid contract

Every block below is required. Every other top-level block — description, domain, tags, labels, consumes, build, orchestration, governance (agentPolicy, sovereignty, accessPolicy, retention), lineage, lifecycle, environments, docs — is opt-in and layered on as you need it.

fluidVersion: "0.7.5"
kind: DataProduct
id:   demo.bronze.hello_world
name: "Hello World"
metadata:
  owner: { team: data-platform }
exposes:
  - exposeId: hello
    kind: table
    contract:
      schema:
        - { name: id, type: STRING, required: true }
    binding:
      platform: local
      format:   parquet
      location: { path: "./hello.parquet" }

What each required block does

Block	Required	Meaning
`fluidVersion`	✅	Which contract version this file targets. Use `"0.7.5"` for the latest schema.
`kind`	✅	`DataProduct` or `MLPipeline`.
`id`	✅	Globally unique product id. Convention: `domain.layer.name`.
`name`	✅	Human-readable display name.
`metadata`	✅	Only `metadata.owner` is required; by convention `owner.team` is the one truly required field.
`exposes`	✅	The ports you publish. Each entry requires `exposeId`, `kind`, `contract`, and `binding`.

Inside each exposes[] entry:

contract — the schema columns (or an openapiRef) plus optional data-quality rules.
binding — where the data physically lives: platform + format + location.

0.7.5 note. The kafka-connect acquisition pattern gains an opt-in Iceberg streaming sink (iceberg_sink_enabled, streamingSink, sink_topics), and binding.platform adds confluent (Confluent Cloud Tableflow). 0.7.5 is additive and fully backward-compatible — every valid 0.7.4 contract still validates, so bumping fluidVersion is all it takes.

Validate it

Validate any .fluid.yml against the published JSON Schema for 0.7.5:

https://open-data-protocol.github.io/fluid/schema/fluid-schema-0.7.5.json

Point any JSON-Schema validator (for example ajv, check-jsonschema, or your CI's schema step) at that URL.

Editor autocomplete & inline validation

Add this line as the first line of your .fluid.yml so the YAML Language Server (bundled with the VS Code YAML extension) gives you live completion and validation:

# yaml-language-server: $schema=https://open-data-protocol.github.io/fluid/schema/fluid-schema-0.7.5.json
fluidVersion: "0.7.5"
kind: DataProduct
# ...

Next steps

FLUID by Example — the step-by-step build-up from this minimal file to a production source-aligned acquisition product.
Schema Anatomy — the full tour of every top-level block with deep-dive links.