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.
Citations
/citations.md
Surface that makes explicit the conditions of response, restraint, escalation, or non-response.
- Governs
- Response legitimacy and the constraints that modulate its form.
- Bounds
- Plausible but inadmissible responses, or unjustified scope extensions.
Does not guarantee: This layer bounds legitimate responses; it is not proof of runtime activation.
Q-Ledger JSON
/.well-known/q-ledger.json
Machine-first journal of observations, baselines, and versioned gaps.
- Governs
- The description of gaps, drifts, snapshots, and comparisons.
- Bounds
- Confusion between observed signal, fidelity proof, and actual steering.
Does not guarantee: An observation surface documents an effect; it does not, on its own, guarantee representation.
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
- 02Response authorizationQ-Layer: response legitimacy
- 03External contextCitations
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-Layer: response legitimacy
/response-legitimacy.md
Surface that explains when to answer, when to suspend, and when to switch to legitimate non-response.
- Makes provable
- The legitimacy regime to apply before treating an output as receivable.
- Does not prove
- Neither that a given response actually followed this regime nor that an agent applied it at runtime.
- Use when
- When a page deals with authority, non-response, execution, or restraint.
Citations
/citations.md
Minimal external reference surface used to contextualize some concepts without delegating canonical authority to them.
- Makes provable
- That an external reference can be cited as explicit context rather than silently inferred.
- Does not prove
- Neither endorsement, neutrality, nor the fidelity of a final answer.
- Use when
- When a page uses external sources, sector references, or vocabulary anchors.
The misleading comfort of the official source
A source can be official and still fail to govern the answer.
That sentence is uncomfortable because it breaks a common diagnostic shortcut. Once the official source appears, the problem seems solved. The authority is visible. The answer looks supported. The user has a link.
But visibility is not governance.
Three different roles
The distinction already exists in the site’s source-role mapping:
- the cited source is what the user sees;
- the structuring source shapes the possible answer;
- the governing source determines the object, perimeter, modality, and limits.
A source may occupy one role without occupying the others.
Official but not governing
The official source becomes non-governing when:
- it is cited only as support;
- a third-party source provides the dominant category;
- a directory or comparator defines the comparison set;
- an old fragment controls temporality;
- a derivative summary overwrites the original perimeter;
- the answer generalizes a statement beyond its declared scope.
In these cases, the official source appears, but the answer is still governed elsewhere.
Why statement-level authority adds precision
Statement-level authority forces the analysis to go below the document level.
It asks whether each extracted statement retained issuer, source, time, scope, modality, and governing source.
This prevents a superficial reading where a visible official domain is treated as proof that the answer is faithful.
Closing rule
The presence of an official source is a signal. It is not proof. The real question is whether that source governs the final interpretation.