Role archetypes, explained
How RPF marks every role as legacy, future-ready, or hybrid — what each archetype means, who sets it, why future-ready roles must carry cited sources, and how the successor link chains a transformation together.
Every role in RPF carries an archetype: legacy (today), future-ready (tomorrow), or hybrid (the transitional step in between). The archetype is what turns a flat catalogue of roles into a transformation map — it's how we name the difference between a 2025 BIM Manager and a 2030 BIM Manager in the same discipline.
Three audiences read the archetype differently. Professional bodies read it as a sponsorship target — "sponsor the future-ready Architect pack." Org leaders read it as a destination — "where are our roles relative to future-ready?" Practitioners read it as a roadmap — "what's the path from where I am to where this market is going?"
What is a role archetype?
A role archetype is a stable label on every role row in RPF that says where the role sits on the transformation arc: legacy (today's role, the starting point), future-ready (the role we're transforming toward), or hybrid (a transitional step between the two). The archetype is set by an admin in the role builder; it is not auto-detected from content.
The archetype is what makes RPF a transformation platform rather than a job-title registry. Without it, two roles called "BIM Manager" sit next to each other in the catalogue and look like duplicates. With it, the second is named as the future-ready successor of the first — and the role-diff surface can tell you exactly what changed.
The three archetypes
Today's role — the starting point of a transformation. Legacy roles describe the work as it is being done now in the market. They don't need future-ready citations; they document the current state honestly.
The role we're transforming toward. Each item on a future-ready role must carry at least one SMC-grounded citation — the published evidence that justifies the change. This is the citation gate (§3.3 of the strategy memo).
A transitional step between legacy and future-ready. Hybrid roles describe the partial moves a market is making today — the BIM Manager who runs federated models but hasn't yet been asked to author the Exchange Information Requirements. Useful when a clean legacy→future-ready jump is too far for a single phase.
Three audience views
What does future-ready Architect / Engineer / Facility Manager look like in our jurisdiction, with cited evidence? The archetype is the artefact you sponsor. "Sponsor the future-ready Architect pack for Ireland" is a more compelling pitch than "sponsor a role-profile-flow pack" — see the body one-pager.
Where are our org's roles against the canonical future-ready roles for our jurisdiction, and what's the local adaptation? Filter the catalogue by archetype to see at a glance which of your discipline roles already have a published future-ready counterpart and which don't.
What does my role become in 5 years in my market, and what's the journey? Open the role detail of your current role, follow the successor link to the future-ready role, then open the role diff — the diff is your transformation roadmap.
Canonical future-ready
Each supported jurisdiction publishes its own canonical future-ready role per discipline, sponsored by a body active in that market. There is no single global canonical future-ready Architect — Ireland's, Brazil's, and Canada's all differ in their cited materials, regulatory drivers, and procurement language.
The canonical future-ready role is the one any org-fork compares against. When an org-leader filters their catalogue to future-ready, the rows are either the canonical (published by a sponsoring body) or org-forked copies derived from it. The role-diff surface always lines up against the canonical in the org's jurisdiction.
Setting archetype in the role builder
- 1Open the role in the role builder (admin only). The archetype selector sits in the Draft pane near the title field, alongside the country code.
- 2Pick legacy, future-ready, or hybrid. The selector is required at publish time — a role can be saved as a draft without an archetype, but cannot be published without one.
- 3If you picked future-ready, the successor field becomes optional (this role is the destination, so it has no successor of its own). If you picked legacy or hybrid, the successor field is where you point to the future-ready successor — it's a combobox over published roles.
- 4Save the proposal. The change goes through the role-converse proposal flow (the same path every role update takes), so it's reviewable, auditable, and citation-gated. On publish, the role's archetype is live across browse, detail, badges, agent chips, and the role-diff route.
The citation gate
Items on a future-ready role must carry at least one cited source — a Standards / Materials / Citations (SMC) reference that explains why this item belongs in the future-ready picture. This is the transformation-citations gate from §3.3 of the strategy memo, and it's the line that defends RPF from being read as opinion.
The gate fires at publish time. A future-ready role cannot be published if any of its items lacks a citation; the validation message tells the author which item is missing one and links to the citation picker. Legacy and hybrid roles are exempt — they document current practice, which is observed rather than cited.
The successor link
Every role can carry a succeeds_role_id — a foreign key pointing to the role this one transforms from. A legacy BIM Manager (2025) might succeed nothing; a hybrid BIM Manager (2027) succeeds the legacy one; the future-ready BIM Manager (2030) succeeds the hybrid one. Chains can be any length, but typical transformation packs are 2–3 steps.
The successor link is what the role-diff surface uses to pre-select a comparison target. Open a role with a successor set, click the Diff tab in the builder (or visit /[lang]/roles/[slug]/diff), and the diff is auto-computed against the successor. You can override with ?vs=<slug> on the standalone route.
Known limitations
- Archetype is set explicitly by admins, not auto-detected from content. The future-ready signal is intentionally a human judgment grounded in cited sources, not a heuristic over keywords.
- A role can carry only one successor pointer. Branching transformation maps (one legacy splitting into two future-ready specialists) require two separate successor records — one per future-ready role pointing back to the same legacy.
- Hybrid is a curatorial category, not a sub-archetype with its own gate. Hybrid roles are published without the citation gate; if you want hybrid items cited, mark them on the future-ready destination instead.
- Pre-M18.3.1 published roles are NULL on archetype until an admin classifies them. The badge is suppressed for NULL rows so the row doesn't read as noisy; the role-builder DraftPane shows the unset state inline for authoring.
Next steps
Sponsor a canonical future-ready role
Your jurisdiction has no canonical future-ready role for this discipline yet — sponsor one, your body's attribution is permanent on the published role, and the diff surface lights up the moment the first org-fork is published.
