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Editions

What Engineering Runtime offers

Start on one laptop, free, with no platform to deploy. Add enterprise capabilities when the organisation needs them. Add central management only if it earns its place — the execution model never changes.

Every level runs the same way. Humans, CI systems, automation and AI agents execute through the Runtime, and adoption adds capabilities around that model rather than replacing it.

Runtime keeps working when the management layer is unreachable. Governance is never a dependency of getting work done.

Product model

Engineering Runtime has three natural adoption levels:

Edition Purpose
Community Runtime and reusable Engineering Capabilities
Enterprise Runtime with additional enterprise capabilities
Enterprise Platform Enterprise Runtime plus the optional Control Plane for organizational management

The progression is:

Community
Runtime + Capabilities
        │
        ▼
Enterprise
Runtime + Enterprise capabilities
        │
        ▼
Enterprise Platform
Runtime + Enterprise capabilities + Control Plane

The Runtime remains the execution foundation throughout.

These are product editions, not an open-core split. The Runtime is proprietary at every level. Community requires no paid license, but that does not make the Runtime source open; Engineering Capabilities are the open ecosystem and extension surface.

Community

Community is the local-first Engineering Runtime experience.

Human / CI / AI
       │
       ▼
Engineering Runtime
       │
       ├── Providers
       ├── Engines
       ├── Capabilities
       ├── Policy
       └── Execution
       │
       ▼
Engineering Systems

It does not require a Control Plane.

Runtime configuration and policy can remain local.

This model is suitable for:

  • individual engineers
  • local engineering automation
  • CI/CD
  • AI-assisted engineering
  • capability development
  • evaluation and adoption

Community is not a different execution architecture.

It is Engineering Runtime operating independently.

Enterprise

Enterprise extends the Runtime for organizations that require additional commercial and governance capabilities without necessarily deploying a Control Plane.

Conceptually:

Human / CI / AI
       │
       ▼
Enterprise Runtime
       │
       ├── Runtime capabilities
       ├── Enterprise capabilities
       └── Policy-governed execution
       │
       ▼
Engineering Systems

The Runtime remains local and independently useful.

Enterprise features can evolve around areas such as:

  • additional governance controls
  • enterprise configuration
  • commercial provider capabilities
  • enterprise support
  • organizational policy requirements
  • advanced operational controls

A company should not need to deploy a management platform simply to use enterprise Runtime functionality.

Enterprise Platform

Enterprise Platform adds the Control Plane.

                 Control Plane
                      │
               management layer
                      │
                      ▼

Human / CI / AI → Engineering Runtime → Engineering Systems

The Control Plane provides organization-level management around Runtime deployments.

Its direction includes:

  • Runtime fleet management
  • centrally managed policy and configuration
  • Runtime identity
  • enterprise SSO and RBAC
  • licensing and entitlements
  • organization-level administration
  • operational metadata
  • observability integration

The Control Plane does not execute engineering operations.

Execution remains with the Runtime.

Capability comparison

This table separates what ships today from what is planned, because the distinction matters when evaluating the product:

  • yes available in the current release
  • partial some of it ships today; the row says which part
  • direction designed and intended, not available yet
Capability Community Enterprise Enterprise Platform
Runtime CLI yes yes yes
Engineering Capabilities yes yes yes
Runtime Providers and Engines yes yes yes
Local execution yes yes yes
Local policy enforcement yes yes yes
AI / CI / human execution model yes yes yes
Structured local execution records yes yes yes
Managed policy/configuration Local Local direction
Runtime fleet management — — partial fleet metadata and heartbeat
Runtime registration and machine identity — — direction
Enterprise SSO / RBAC for management — — direction
Organization-level administration — — direction
Enterprise Runtime capabilities — direction direction
Enterprise licensing / entitlements — direction direction
OpenTelemetry export direction direction direction

Control Plane required? No for Community and Enterprise; yes for Enterprise Platform — that is the only thing the third tier adds structurally.

The editions above describe the intended commercial model. Today the Runtime ships as one binary with the Community feature set; Enterprise and Enterprise Platform describe where the product is going, not two things you can buy right now.

The important distinction is that Enterprise does not automatically mean Control Plane.

An organization can adopt enterprise Runtime capabilities without changing the execution architecture.

Execution telemetry

Detailed Runtime execution information does not need to be stored centrally by Engineering Runtime. Organisations already operate observability platforms designed for that purpose.

Today, the Runtime writes structured execution records locally, readable with runtime audit tail, runtime audit status and runtime audit verify, and every command can emit JSON with -o json for existing tooling.

Direction, not yet implemented: export over OpenTelemetry to a customer-operated destination such as Splunk, New Relic, Dynatrace or an OTEL Collector.

Either way the organisation retains ownership of:

  • detailed execution telemetry
  • retention
  • search
  • access control
  • compliance
  • data residency

The Enterprise Platform Control Plane can then focus on the metadata required to manage Runtime instances rather than becoming another logging platform.

Where to start

Everyone starts in the same place today — the Runtime is one binary and the Community feature set is what ships. This table says which level a need belongs to in the product model, and whether it is available yet:

Situation Belongs to Available
Exploring Engineering Runtime Community Today
Building reusable engineering capabilities Community Today
Using Runtime from CI or AI assistants Community Today
Governed local execution with structured records Community Today
Organisation needs enterprise Runtime features Enterprise Direction
Organisation needs centrally managed Runtime fleets Enterprise Platform Direction
Organisation needs SSO/RBAC around Runtime management Enterprise Platform Direction
Organisation wants central policy/configuration management Enterprise Platform Direction

Adoption can therefore happen progressively:

Install Runtime
      ↓
Build / consume capabilities
      ↓
Standardize Runtime usage
      ↓
Add Enterprise capabilities if required
      ↓
Add Control Plane if organizational management is required

There is no need to introduce the Control Plane before it provides useful organizational value.

What exists today

The current product focus is:

Runtime
   +
Providers / Engines
   +
Capabilities
   +
Documentation

These form the foundation on which the broader product can grow.

The existing Control Plane implementation demonstrates the enterprise management direction and future product model.

Enterprise Platform areas will mature around the Runtime as requirements become concrete, including:

  • fleet identity and management
  • managed configuration and policy
  • enterprise authentication
  • RBAC
  • licensing and entitlements
  • operational metadata
  • observability integration
  • organizational administration

The Runtime and capability ecosystem do not depend on those features being complete.

One execution architecture

The most important property of the edition model is what does not change:

Human
CI
AI
Automation
    │
    ▼
Capability
    │
    ▼
Engineering Runtime
    │
    ▼
Engineering System

Community uses it.

Enterprise uses it.

Enterprise Platform uses it.

The Control Plane sits beside and above this architecture as a management layer.

It does not create another execution path.

Technical documentation

Topic Documentation
Runtime installation Installation
Runtime configuration Configuration
Policy Policy
Runtime Home Runtime Home
CI/CD CI/CD
AI-assisted usage AI Agent
Full technical documentation docs.engineeringruntime.com

Design principle

The Runtime executes. Capabilities capture reusable engineering knowledge. The Control Plane manages enterprise adoption.

An edition can change the level of organizational management.

It does not change the fundamental execution model.