R Triple B

A deterministic, auditable auction bidding engine.

R Triple B is an open-source project for specifying and implementing auction bidding behavior. The project separates the behavior of the standard from the language used by any one implementation:

1. a language-neutral specification;
2. a language-neutral conformance suite; and
3. a production-quality Ruby reference implementation.

The first milestone is deliberately narrow: deterministic, timed online proxy bidding with a complete audit trail. Future auction formats will be proposed through RFCs rather than added as customer-specific hooks.

Auction behavior is full of deceptively important edge cases. When two systems receive the same ordered commands under the same configuration, they should reach the same result and explain why. RBBB aims to make those rules explicit, portable, testable, and open to domain experts—not merely buried in one application's code.

specification/   Language-neutral concepts, schemas, and API contracts
conformance/     Portable behavior scenarios for every compliant engine
ruby/engine/     Pure-Ruby reference implementation
ruby/server/     Future deployable reference service
rfcs/            Proposed changes to normative auction behavior
docs/            Architecture, terminology, and design decisions

The reference implementation exposes a pure decision boundary:

decision = engine.decide(current_state, command)
new_state = engine.apply(current_state, decision.events)

Rails, PostgreSQL, HTTP, and real-time delivery may surround that core, but framework and persistence concerns do not belong inside the auction rules.

RFC 0001 defines the accepted timed online proxy-bidding baseline, backed by the language-neutral conformance suite. The Ruby reference engine runs every timed-proxy scenario in that suite. This completes the behavior exercised by the initial RFC suite, not the persistence, API, security, or operational work required for production. The matching command, event, rejection, configuration, and state schemas are experimental rather than a stable compatibility promise. Anything marked draft may still change before the first stable release.

See ROADMAP.md, docs/architecture.md, and specification/README.md for the planned path.

The reference engine is packaged as the pre-stable rbbb gem. Install the current evaluation build from RubyGems.org with an exact prerelease version:

gem install rbbb --version 0.1.0.pre.3

To build the same version from a reviewed checkout:

cd ruby/engine
bundle exec rake package:verify
gem build rbbb.gemspec
gem install ./rbbb-0.1.0.pre.3.gem

This artifact is for evaluation and historical replay only. It is not a hosted service and must not be used to accept or resolve live bids. See the Ruby engine guide for installation and usage, or the GitHub releases for downloadable artifacts and checksums.

Auctioneers, software operators, designers, security researchers, and developers are all invited to contribute. A real-world edge case expressed as a provenance-safe conformance scenario can be as valuable as code.

Before contributing, read CONTRIBUTING.md. Normative rule changes use the RFC process. Security issues should be reported privately as described in SECURITY.md. General support expectations are in SUPPORT.md.

RBBB is available under the MIT License. The specification, conformance materials, reference implementation, examples, and associated documentation in this repository use the same license unless a file says otherwise.