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.
Interpretation policy
/.well-known/interpretation-policy.json
Published policy that explains interpretation, scope, and restraint constraints.
- 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-Layer in Markdown
/response-legitimacy.md
Canonical surface for response legitimacy, clarification, and legitimate 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.
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.
Statement-level authority retention framework
This framework tests whether an extracted statement retains enough authority to govern an AI response.
It is designed for cases where a system cites, summarizes, or recombines a fragment from a larger source. The question is not merely whether the statement is present. The question is whether its authority survived extraction.
Diagnostic dimensions
1. Issuer retention
Can the response still identify who issued the statement?
Failure mode: a statement is treated as general knowledge even though it was issued by a specific source, institution, author, or governance surface.
2. Source retention
Can the response still identify the canonical source or document parent?
Failure mode: a fragment is cited without its original document hierarchy, leaving the user unable to tell whether it is canonical, derivative, archival, or contextual.
3. Temporal retention
Can the response preserve publication date, update state, or supersession state?
Failure mode: an old statement is used as current, or a time-bounded statement is converted into a permanent rule.
4. Scope retention
Can the response preserve where the statement applies and where it does not apply?
Failure mode: a local statement becomes general, a contextual example becomes a doctrine, or a caveat disappears.
5. Modality retention
Can the response preserve whether the statement is descriptive, normative, hypothetical, archival, conditional, or suspensive?
Failure mode: a description becomes a recommendation, an observation becomes a rule, or a legitimate non-response becomes a weak answer.
6. Governing-source retention
Can the response show which source governs the final interpretation?
Failure mode: the official source is cited, but another source structures or governs the answer.
Scoring rule
A statement is authority-retained only when issuer, source, time, scope, modality, and governing source remain reconstructible.
If one dimension is missing, the statement may be usable only as contextual support.
If two or more dimensions are missing, the statement should not govern the response without clarification.
Output classes
- Retained authority: the statement can govern the answer.
- Contextual authority: the statement may support the answer but cannot govern it alone.
- Unstable authority: the statement requires clarification before use.
- Lost authority: the statement should not be used as governing material.
Relation to proof of fidelity
Proof of fidelity asks whether the response preserved object, perimeter, modality, and limits.
This framework adds a finer test: whether each extracted statement still carries the authority needed to make that preservation possible.