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Ecoconception

Sovrium treats environmental footprint as a first-class platform property — not a feature, not a paid tier, not a checkbox. The platform is frugal by default, the posture is operator-controlled through environment variables, and the footprint is measurable rather than aspirational. Owning your data and minimising its environmental cost are the same fight against absentee infrastructure.

The eco posture lives in ECO_* environment variables — the twin of DATABASE_URL, STORAGE_PROVIDER, and AI_PROVIDER. It is never part of the app schema: a schema author must not be able to silently disable frugality for the end users of their app (ADR 013).

Core Principles

Principle Meaning
Frugal by default Every operator-facing toggle defaults to the eco-aligned setting. Operators opt out, never in.
Operator-controlled, not schema-controlled Eco posture is in env vars, not app.eco.*. Schema fields for eco are explicitly rejected.
Measurable, not aspirational The platform commits to an X-Eco-Index response header and a page-weight budget; eco badges without measurement are forbidden.

The ECO_* Env-Var Contract

Frugal by default — operators opt out by overriding. These are the operator knobs for the platform's environmental posture.

Env var Default Options Purpose
ECO_MODE balanced balanced | lenient (legacy on→balanced, off→lenient) Master eco-posture toggle; gates the downstream sub-knobs.
ECO_IMAGE_FORMAT avif avif | webp | jpeg | png Server-side image transcoding default. AVIF is ~50% smaller than JPEG.
ECO_PAGE_CACHE on on | off In-memory cache of static, request-invariant page HTML — skips renderToString on hits.
ECO_INDEX_HEADER on on | off Emit the X-Eco-Index response header graded from transfer size.
ECO_LOW_DATA_DEFAULT off on | off | respect-client End-user low-data-mode posture (down-shift assets when on / on client hint).
ECO_AI_PROVIDER_PRECEDENCE local-first local-first | cloud-first | local-only Routing precedence for AI calls; pairs with AI_PROVIDER.
ECO_AI_MAX_CARBON_CLASS G (permissive) A–G Upper bound on the carbon class of a selected AI provider/region.
ECO_PAGE_WEIGHT_BUDGET_KB 500 integer Per-page transfer budget for the page-weight gate.
ECO_RETENTION_PURGE_DAYS 365 integer (0 disables) Default soft-deleted-row purge horizon for tables that opt in.
ECO_DESIGN_LAYER on on | off Emit the always-on default design layer (an override surface, not a load-bearing default).

Already-Aligned Foundations

Several Sovrium decisions serve frugality before any ECO_* variable is touched:

Decision Footprint benefit
Standalone binary distribution One static binary, no Node runtime, fewer dependencies at boot. See Database Infrastructure.
SQLite + local-storage zero-config defaults Single process, no managed cloud DB required.
SSR + islands architecture Only the active island ships; heavy editors lazy-load.
Programmatic CSS compiler Compiled per-theme on demand, in-memory cache — no megabyte static stylesheet. See Theme.
Soft-delete with retention horizon Explicit purge-or-keep posture instead of infinite accumulation. See Soft Delete.
Local-first AI option Local inference avoids cross-Atlantic round-trips.

Low-Data Mode

ECO_LOW_DATA_DEFAULT controls how aggressively Sovrium down-shifts asset weight for end users. When on, low-data variants (lower-resolution images, simpler renders) are served by default; with respect-client, the posture follows the visitor's Save-Data / prefers-reduced-data client hints; off always serves the full variant.

Low-data mode down-shifts gracefully — it never refuses to render a chart or rich-text editor. Paternalistic feature-blocking is an explicit anti-pattern; eco posture lowers fidelity, it does not break a user's workflow.

Measurement: X-Eco-Index

When ECO_INDEX_HEADER=on, page responses carry an X-Eco-Index header graded (A–G) from the response transfer size against tiered thresholds (the largest sitting at ECO_PAGE_WEIGHT_BUDGET_KB). This makes the footprint observable per response rather than a marketing claim — eco badges without a measured number are forbidden (ADR 013).

Eco Dashboard

The admin eco dashboard surfaces the running posture: an RGESN self-evaluation tile, the AI provider mix by carbon class, the top storage consumers, and the current ECO_* settings in force. It reads the same measured signals (the X-Eco-Index grades, the page-weight budget) the platform emits — never a synthetic "Eco Mode On" badge.

Anti-Patterns

  • Greenwashing badges — rendering an "Eco Mode On" badge without a measured footprint number.
  • Paternalistic feature blocking — refusing to render content because of an eco posture; always down-shift gracefully.
  • Paid eco tier — gating eco features behind a license key. All eco posture is free in self-hosted mode.
  • Schema-level eco config — adding app.eco.lowDataMode = true. Eco is operator-controlled; use env vars.
  • Hardcoded cloud AI calls — bypassing ECO_AI_PROVIDER_PRECEDENCE and calling a cloud provider directly. Always route through the precedence resolver.