ModeShape version 2.8 allowed the schema file to be specified in the repository configuration but this feature is missing in 3.0.

It should be possible to specify the schema file in the json or jboss as7 configuration of a repository and either load the schema into the repository or check it against the schema in an existing repository (sort of like hibernate's hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto options of validate,update,create and create-drop)

2.8 configuration file:

<configuration xmlns:mode="http://www.modeshape.org/1.0" xmlns:jcr="http://www.jcp.org/jcr/1.0">
  <mode:repositories>
      <mode:repository jcr:name="testRepository" mode:source="testSource">
          <mode:descriptors>
          <jcr:nodeTypes>
               <mode:resource>/jcr/schema.cnd</mode:resource>
          </jcr:nodeTypes>
      </mode:repository>
  </mode:repositories>
 ...
</configuration>