Governance artifacts
Governance files brought into scope by this page
This page is anchored to published surfaces that declare identity, precedence, limits, and the corpus reading conditions. Their order below gives the recommended reading sequence.
Definitions canon
/canon.md
Canonical surface that fixes identity, roles, negations, and divergence rules.
- Governs
- Public identity, roles, and attributes that must not drift.
- Bounds
- Extrapolations, entity collisions, and abusive requalification.
Does not guarantee: A canonical surface reduces ambiguity; it does not guarantee faithful restitution on its own.
Site context
/site-context.md
Notice that qualifies the nature of the site, its reference function, and its non-transactional limits.
- Governs
- Editorial framing, temporality, and the readability of explicit changes.
- Bounds
- Silent drifts and readings that assume stability without checking versions.
Does not guarantee: Versioning makes a gap auditable; it does not automatically correct outputs already in circulation.
Public AI manifest
/ai-manifest.json
Structured inventory of the surfaces, registries, and modules that extend the canonical entrypoint.
- Governs
- Access order across surfaces and initial precedence.
- Bounds
- Free readings that bypass the canon or the published order.
Does not guarantee: This surface publishes a reading order; it does not force execution or obedience.
Evidence layer
Probative surfaces brought into scope by this page
This page does more than point to governance files. It is also anchored to surfaces that make observation, traceability, fidelity, and audit more reconstructible. Their order below makes the minimal evidence chain explicit.
- 01Canon and scopeDefinitions canon
- 02Weak observationQ-Ledger
Definitions canon
/canon.md
Opposable base for identity, scope, roles, and negations that must survive synthesis.
- Makes provable
- The reference corpus against which fidelity can be evaluated.
- Does not prove
- Neither that a system already consults it nor that an observed response stays faithful to it.
- Use when
- Before any observation, test, audit, or correction.
Q-Ledger
/.well-known/q-ledger.json
Public ledger of inferred sessions that makes some observed consultations and sequences visible.
- Makes provable
- That a behavior was observed as weak, dated, contextualized trace evidence.
- Does not prove
- Neither actor identity, system obedience, nor strong proof of activation.
- Use when
- When it is necessary to distinguish descriptive observation from strong attestation.
Preview control is not only a search display setting. It shapes which passages can become visible evidence in search results and AI-mediated answers.
A page can be accessible while its most important passage is hard to show, summarize or quote. When this happens, a system may rely on a weaker passage, a secondary page or an external source that exposes the answer more clearly.
The governance question
The question is not whether every passage should be exposed. The question is whether the passages expected to govern public answers are visible enough to be recovered and displayed.
If an organization blocks snippets for a canonical definition, then expects that definition to appear as the cited source, the access policy and citation expectation are misaligned.
What to review
A preview governance review should examine:
- snippet and preview directives;
- text hidden behind interaction;
- answer placement near the top of the page;
- visible dates and source context;
- whether stronger pages expose weaker passages than derivative pages.
Relation to source hierarchy
Preview control should follow source hierarchy. The canonical page should expose the clearest governing passage. Derivative pages should route toward it rather than competing with it.
Practical correction
Add visible, bounded, answer-ready passages to pages that govern important claims. Avoid hiding the only exact definition behind UX elements. Keep preview policy aligned with the citation role expected from the page.