The OVP Principles

Short enough to remember. Each one has teeth — it should be possible to point at a design decision and say which principle it violates.

Vehicle First

The vehicle is the permanent entity. Owners, workshops, and providers are temporary participants in its history, not its owners.

History Is Immutable

Nothing is ever edited or deleted. Corrections are new events appended to the timeline, never rewrites of what came before.

Facts Before Opinions

The protocol carries facts — things that happened. Interpretation (“this part is likely failing”) is a layer applications and AI build on top, never mixed into the record itself.

Open Before Convenient

Anyone can implement a provider, a client, or an event producer, without asking permission. If a shortcut requires gatekeeping who’s allowed to participate, take the longer road.

Providers Compete

Providers differentiate on UX, AI, diagnostics quality, integrations, and reliability — never by making it hard to leave.

Portability Is a Right

A vehicle’s full history can always be exported and moved to another provider. This is not a feature to be added later; it’s a constraint the format is designed under from day one.

Trust Through Cryptography

Trust is established through signatures, passkeys, domain verification, business registry checks, and accumulated reputation — never through a human clicking “approve” on someone else’s behalf.

Local Before Cloud

The application is useful offline, immediately, with no account. Cloud adds sync, backup, AI, and collaboration — it is never the precondition for basic use.

Built for Decades

A QR code stuck under a bonnet today should still resolve correctly in twenty years, even if the passport has moved providers three times since.

The Protocol Is Forever

Implementations are replaceable. OpenDiag, its cloud, and every workshop tool built against OVP today may not exist in ten years. The protocol should still make sense.