Response conditions
Response conditions designate the set of explicit prerequisites that determine whether an AI system can respond, how it must respond, and in which cases it must produce a legitimate non-response or request clarification. They transform a “plausible” output into a legitimate output.
Without response conditions, the system responds by default, fills absences, crosses the authority boundary, and increases the canon-output gap. With response conditions, governance becomes enforceable: bounded response, conditional response, or non-response.
Definition
Response conditions are the rules that frame the output and specify:
- minimum conditions necessary to respond (authorized sources, context, version, jurisdiction);
- clarification triggers (missing information that changes validity);
- legitimate non-response triggers (canonical silence, authority conflict, ungoverned inference);
- form obligations (mention of date, validity, limits, inferential status).
Response conditions are the junction point between interpretability perimeter, authority boundary, and interpretive observability.
