Gattached

Gattached is a software design concept that describes the dynamic association of arbitrary metadata with runtime objects without modifying their intrinsic type or class definitions. It enables developers to attach descriptive labels, permissions, auditing tags, or feature flags to objects in a way that can be added, changed, or removed at runtime.

Mechanism: A separate attribute registry or map stores metadata keyed by object identity or a stable handle. The object maintains a lightweight reference to its metadata as needed. Operations include attach, retrieve, update, and detach. Implementations typically rely on weak references or object lifecycles to avoid memory leaks, and may provide optional scoping rules.

Applications: Gattached supports extensible annotations in frameworks, dynamic policy enforcement, and plugin ecosystems where core data models must remain stable while auxiliary information evolves. It helps separate concerns and reduces the need for subclassing or model mutations to track new attributes.

Design considerations: The approach introduces runtime complexity, potential performance overhead, and risks of unstructured data. Developers should enforce schemas, validation, and access controls, and ensure predictable cleanup. Interactions with persistence layers require careful serialization and reconstruction of the attribute registry.

See also: dynamic attributes, metadata, composition patterns, and the GATT Bluetooth profile, which is unrelated but shares the acronym. The term Gattached appears primarily in theoretical discussions and in some experimental libraries rather than as a standardized design pattern.