Summary: We updated the guidelines for adapters (v0.2) and application cases (v0.2). We switched from a “bronze-silver-gold” tiering system to “required-additional”, made the goals of these guidelines and the listing system clearer, and further emphasized interoperability. But we still need your feedback.
During the last preCICE Workshop, we discussed our plans to set standards to facilitate community contributions. The standardization aims to make it easier to mix together contributions developed by different groups, and start developing your own, knowing that the world will be able to discover, obtain, (re-)use, and extend them. In other words, make them FAIR, with a particular emphasis on important technical aspects unique to preCICE.
Before the workshop, we published a first draft of guidelines for adapters (v0.1 - old) and application cases (v0.1 - old), distributed them to the workshop participants, and we were convinced we were making preCICE spark joy! 
Main feedback points
The discussion was truly valuable to us, as we did not only get positive feedback, but we also discovered critical blind spots.
On the positive side, we got the impression that the community welcomed the overall effort. Everyone seemed to acknowledge the added value for visibility, generality, maintainability, and reproducibility. The guidelines are believed to provide a transparent roadmap and build confidence that each contribution will have wider impact.
The criticism focused mainly on the “bronze-silver-gold” tiering system. Many were concerned that the whole process could be misunderstood or misused as a metric for the scientific value of each contribution and related work, while for many “bronze” reflected failure. Another concern was that it would be complicated to request further funding for contributions that are already characterized as “gold”, as they might be perceived as scientifically complete.
The tiering system was mainly envisioned as a motive for contributors to gradually increase the conformity of their contribution to the standards, with help from the developers, who would provide a thorough check and related suggestions. We do, however, understand the concerns of the community, and we changed to a different system, which should be more intuitive, safeguard quality, and still provide impulses for improvement.
Incorporating the feedback
The updated (v0.2) guidelines work on two levels: “required” and “additional”. The “required” now stands above the previous “bronze” level, and already ensures interoperability of components. Fulfilling all of them is required to get the “contribution conforming to the preCICE standards” badge. The conformity to each “additional” guideline is listed individually for each contribution and conforming to it brings, of course, tangible benefits in practice.
Every reviewed contribution will be listed on the website, sorted by most recent addition. There will be a separation between those fulfilling all the requirements and those not yet reviewed or fully adjusted.
Important difference between the new set of required guidelines and the previous “bronze level” is that now all conforming contributions will need to adhere to the preCICE configuration schema. This schema is currently being evaluated, and we will soon explain more details about this and ask you to compare it to your needs.
Next steps
We did not get public feedback in the forum so far, but now is really the time to let us know if we are moving in the right direction, and/or if we need to make further changes. It is also the time to look at your contributions and imagine submitting them for review: Which guidelines would you not be able to fulfill? We already know that many of the “official” adapters and application cases need work.
Things we need you to do:
- Register in this forum to receive updates (whenever we post in the “News” section), or subscribe to individual threads.
- Compare your adapters with the adapter guidelines and give us feedback in the adapter guidelines discussion.
- Compare your (to-be) published cases with the application case guidelines and give us feedback in the application case guidelines discussion.
- Think: What else would be helpful to be standardized (especially preCICE-specific)? Last time you used a case or adapter made by someone else, what did you need to adapt? What did you need to figure out that would have been useful to know beforehand?
We will continue discussing online and individually with users that express interest. But we need to do this now, because we plan to present the first rigid set of guidelines (v1.0) in the preCICE Workshop 2025 (this September, in Hamburg). Changing things after that point will be significantly more complicated and longer.
Side notes
A quick reminder and update about our community channels: We are (relatively) active on Mastodon and now also on Bluesky. Our Twitter account is now gone for good. Our YouTube channel will eventually get the recordings from the last workshop.
The call for contributions for the next preCICE workshop is expected to open on March 1.