Layers Overview

Status: Experimental — evolving with active use

GLIMPSE defines seven layers. Each layer has a single responsibility and a fixed set of allowed dependencies.

Dependency diagram

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  edges   (settings, wsgi/asgi — outside GLIMPSE)
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
         ↓ mounts middleware, loads settings
┌─────────────────┐
│     inits        │  DI container, middleware
└─────────────────┘
      ↓          ↓
┌──────────┐  ┌──────────┐
│  gates   │  │  links   │
└──────────┘  └──────────┘
      ↓          ↓
┌──────────────────────────┐
│          mills            │  business logic (framework-free)
└──────────────────────────┘
              ↓
┌──────────────────────────┐
│          specs            │  configuration constants
└──────────────────────────┘
              ↓
┌──────────────────────────┐
│          pacts            │  contracts — depends on nothing
└──────────────────────────┘

Arrows point in the direction of dependency (A → B means A imports B). inits is the only layer that wires links into gates; neither imports the other directly.

Layer summary

Layer	Purpose	Depends on
pacts	Protocols, DTOs, errors, enums, TypedDicts	nothing
specs	Pure configuration constants	pacts
mills	Business logic and services	pacts
links	Repositories, Storage, UoW, external clients	pacts + ORM
gates	Views, forms, URLs, templatetags, CLI commands	pacts + mills
inits	DI container, middleware — wires links into gates	pacts + mills + links
edges	settings, wsgi/asgi, manage.py	outside GLIMPSE

Every layer is a package (directory with __init__.py), never a single .py file.