Current Artifact
Current Artifact is a UI-facing term in MergeSafe. The docs-safe definition is straightforward: it means the artifact file belonging to the active version.
What Current Artifact means
Current Artifact should be documented explicitly because the name sounds like a standalone model, but the cleaner product description is narrower than that.
Use this definition in docs: Current Artifact is the artifact file for the active version.
How it relates to Active Version
Active Version identifies which published release is live. Current Artifact points to the concrete signed JSON file that belongs to that live version.
That relationship is why the terms are related but not identical. One is the release state, the other is the materialized file for that state.
Why users see Current Artifact in the UI
Operators often need to inspect the concrete output that the runtime will fetch. Showing the current artifact helps connect the active release state to a real file.
This is especially useful in publish and runtime conversations because it gives teams a direct way to reason about what is live without collapsing pack, artifact, and version into one overloaded term.
How to talk about it safely
- Say that Current Artifact belongs to the active version.
- Say that the runtime consumes the artifact file as the materialized form of the pack version.
- Avoid claiming that Current Artifact is a separate first-class backend entity unless the product model is later made explicit.