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AI_INTEGRATION_FLOW_CONTRACT.md

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+# Backend ↔ AI Integration Flow Contract
+
+## Ownership
+- `Backend/plants` owns the canonical plant catalog stored in Backend DB.
+- `Ai/farm_data` stores plant catalog snapshots and derived farm read-model data for AI workflows.
+- `Backend/farm_alerts` returns persisted tracker snapshots; it does not expose live AI inference on the tracker endpoint.
+- `Ai/crop_simulation` owns simulation-derived outputs and live inference tasks.
+
+## Flow Types
+- `direct_proxy`: Backend forwards request/response to AI without changing ownership.
+- `backend_owned_data_with_ai_enrichment`: Backend owns the base record and augments it with AI output or AI sync.
+- `cached_snapshot`: Response is served from persisted snapshot state.
+- `live_ai_inference`: Response or task is generated from live AI execution.
+- `ai_owned_derived_output`: AI returns computed or derived outputs from its own services/read-models.
+
+## Response Metadata
+Touched endpoints now expose a top-level `meta` object with:
+- `flow_type`
+- `source_type`
+- `source_service`
+- `ownership`
+- `live`
+- `cached`
+- optional `generated_at`
+- optional `snapshot_at`
+- optional sync fields for Backend plant endpoints