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The canonical schema lives at: https://nika.sh/schema/workflow.json It’s a standard JSON Schema draft 2020-12 document. Your editor’s YAML LSP can consume it directly.

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Contract version

nika: v1 — the first line of every workflow. A single version marker: the key nika declares “this is a Nika workflow”, the value v1 pins the language contract version. There is no separate schema: or apiVersion: field (the engine’s internal canonical URI stays https://nika.sh/spec/v1 for RDF / conformance tooling, but the author never types a URL).

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Point your editor

Add the LSP modeline at the top of any .nika.yaml so your editor’s YAML language server consumes the JSON Schema directly:
the modeline · paste at the top of any workflow
# yaml-language-server: $schema=https://nika.sh/schema/workflow.json
nika: v1
workflow: my-workflow-id
See editor setup for per-IDE instructions.

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Local validation

nika check workflow.nika.yaml   # validates against the v1 contract
nika check workflow.nika.yaml --strict   # + extra lints

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Versioning policy

  • v1 is the only value for the entire lifetime of the v1 contract.
  • Minor additions (a new optional field, a new builtin) are additive and never change the marker — no @minor bumps, no nika migrate for them.
  • A future nika: v2 would be a deliberate breaking-change generation with its own spec — and since the v1 envelope is frozen, that is effectively never.
  • Anti-pattern: nika: v1.0 · nika: "1" · nika: 1.0. The value is exactly v1.