File formats

Every file Mink serves is pinned by a specification in the repository, with conformance fixtures that tests check byte for byte.

Specification	Pins
file.md	A data file's path, Parquet bytes and statistics
records.md	How Kafka record batches become a file's rows
decoding.md	How Avro, Protobuf and JSON Schema payloads become typed columns
schema.md	Table schemas, type mappings, field ids and evolution
layout.md	Time partitioning, assembled files and manifest grouping
metadata.md	Snapshots, table metadata, manifest lists and manifests
statistics.md	The Puffin statistics file with per-column distinct-value sketches

Fixtures live in conformance/fixtures/. Independent readers check them: DuckDB, PyIceberg, Apache DataSketches and a real Kafka broker.