BPMN 2.0

BPMN stands for Business Process Model and Notation. Version 2.0 was released by the Object Management Group in 2011 and ratified as ISO 19510. It is the reason an analyst in Toronto and an engineer in Singapore can open the same `.bpmn` file and see the same process. The spec pins down both the visual shapes and the XML serialisation, down to attribute names.

BPMN 1.x was diagram-only, graphics for humans, no shared file format. BPMN 2.0 added three things that changed the game: a mandated XML schema so diagrams round-trip between tools, execution semantics (what a token does at every element, what counts as "completed"), and a second notation aimed at engines (the Choreography and Collaboration models) for describing how multiple parties interact.

• Defined: the exact shapes for activities, events, and gateways, how pools and lanes group them, what sequence and message flows mean, how tokens propagate, and how `.bpmn` XML must be structured.
• Defined: three sub-languages (process modelling, what most people call BPMN), choreography (parties talking to each other), collaboration (pools exchanging messages).
• Not defined: what the labels on your tasks should say, what colours to use for your heatmap, what KPIs to attach. BPMN is a syntax; how you use it is yours.
• Not defined: how to version diagrams, how to comment, how to organise a library of reusable processes. Those are tool-level features, not spec features.

Every diagram LucidFlow generates is BPMN 2.0-compliant. The export pipeline emits standards-conformant XML, which means a diagram you create from a meeting transcript can be opened unchanged in Camunda, Visio, Bizagi, Signavio, or any BPMN 2.0 engine. On the import side, LucidFlow accepts `.bpmn` files from those same tools and layers its cost, duration, and frequency KPIs on top without modifying the underlying shapes.