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capa profile

Audience: CAPA pyrolysis operators and analysts checking that the domain-profile metadata block on an experiment is well-formed. Scope: sub-app for validating the domain_profile block of an experiment config. Today the sub-app exposes a single command: validate.

$ capa profile --help
Usage: capa profile [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Domain-profile utilities.

Commands:
  validate  Validate the domain-profile metadata block of an experiment config.

A profile here means a domain profile — capa_pyrolysis, cone_calorimeter, etc. — which carries scientific metadata the runtime does not interpret but the bundle preserves for downstream analysis. See CAPA profile fields for what those fields are.

capa profile validate

$ capa profile validate --help
Usage: capa profile validate [OPTIONS] CONFIG

  Validate the domain-profile metadata block of an experiment config.

  Loads the full :class:`ExperimentConfig`, then re-validates the
  profile-specific metadata against the active profile's metadata model
  (CAPA's :class:`CapaPyrolysisMetadata`, etc.). Does not run preflight
  checks — those need a live engine.

Arguments:
  CONFIG  [required]

Loads the experiment config, then runs the profile-specific metadata validator (CAPA's validate_metadata for capa_pyrolysis profiles, the cone-calorimeter equivalent for cone_calorimeter). The check is metadata-only — it does not touch hardware or run preflight checks.

The active profile is picked by the domain_profile.id field in the config:

Profile id contains… Validator used
capa_pyrolysis capa.experiment.profiles.capa_pyrolysis.validate_metadata
cone_calorimeter capa.experiment.profiles.cone_calorimeter.validate_metadata
anything else exit 2 (unknown profile)

Output

Config with a CAPA profile:

$ uv run capa profile validate configs/experiments/sim_capa.yaml
OK: configs/experiments/sim_capa.yaml
  profile: capa.profile.capa_pyrolysis
  standards: ISO 5660-1, ASTM E1354

Config with no profile block — also a pass:

$ uv run capa profile validate configs/experiments/sim_freerun.yaml
OK: configs/experiments/sim_freerun.yaml (no domain_profile)

Exit codes

Code Meaning
0 Profile metadata validated, or config has no domain_profile block.
2 Config load failed, profile id is unknown, or profile metadata failed validation.

When to reach for it vs the others

Situation Command
"Are the CAPA-specific scientific fields (heat flux, sample mass, gas mixture, …) well-formed?" capa profile validate <yaml>
"Will the experiment load at all?" capa validate <yaml>
"Give me everything — structure, hardware, method, profile, in one report." capa config validate <yaml>

capa profile validate is narrower than capa config validate: it skips structural and hardware checks and focuses on the scientific-metadata block. Use it for a fast pre-publish lint of the profile-only portion (e.g., "I just edited the heat-flux fields, is the YAML still valid?"); use capa config validate for the full layered report.

Roadmap

The earlier stub for this page listed two commands that have not been implemented: describe, dump <bundle>.

  • describe — print the profile's expected field schema. Workaround: look at the profile's metadata model (CapaPyrolysisMetadata and similar) or read CAPA profile fields.
  • dump <bundle> — extract the profile snapshot from a sealed bundle. Workaround: jq '.domain_profile' <bundle>/manifest.json gives the active id and standard_refs; the full metadata snapshot lives under <bundle>/profiles/<short_id>.toml.

If either of these would be load-bearing in your workflow (e.g., a tool that needs structured profile output), open an issue.

See also