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.
site-coherence-map.json
/site-coherence-map.json
Published machine-first governance surface.
- Governs
- Part of the corpus reading conditions.
- Bounds
- An inference zone that would otherwise remain implicit.
Does not guarantee: This file does not, on its own, guarantee system obedience.
site-coherence-map.md
/site-coherence-map.md
Published machine-first governance surface.
- Governs
- Part of the corpus reading conditions.
- Bounds
- An inference zone that would otherwise remain implicit.
Does not guarantee: This file does not, on its own, guarantee system obedience.
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.
Complementary artifacts (2)
These surfaces extend the main block. They add context, discovery, routing, or observation depending on the topic.
Public AI manifest
/ai-manifest.json
Structured inventory of the surfaces, registries, and modules that extend the canonical entrypoint.
Canonical AI entrypoint
/.well-known/ai-governance.json
Neutral entrypoint that declares the governance map, precedence chain, and the surfaces to read first.
Site coherence map
This page exposes the human-readable function of the site coherence map. It does not replace the machine-first artifacts managed separately, including /site-coherence-map.json and /site-coherence-map.md. It provides a readable entry point for understanding why those artifacts exist and how they should be interpreted.
A site coherence map is not just a list of URLs. It describes documentary neighborhoods, minimal dependencies, canonical surfaces and recovery paths so that a search engine, model or agent can understand which page should govern which type of inference.
Why this surface exists
Access logs can reveal requested paths that do not match published pages. Some of those requests are noise. Others come from old links, bots, scans or incomplete migrations. But some requests target paths that are coherent with the corpus even when those paths were never published.
The site coherence map reduces that ambiguity space. It makes relations between pages explicit so that a system does not have to reconstruct a probable architecture from scattered fragments.
What this map governs
It helps distinguish several cases:
- an existing page served under its canonical path;
- an old slug that should be redirected;
- an expected language variant that is not published;
- a latent surface that deserves a hub or clarification;
- a phantom URL that should be observed before being exploited;
- a deliberate absence that should not be completed by inference.
This distinction is essential. Not every 404 is an error. Not every 404 is an interpretive signal either. The site coherence map exists to separate noise, technical debt, editorial debt and documentary projections.
Relation with phantom URLs
Phantom URLs become interesting when they reveal a structured expectation. A request for a nonexistent page may indicate that an external system anticipates a documentary surface the site has not published, or reconstructs a hierarchy that differs from the one intentionally chosen.
The site coherence map then answers a simple question: does the requested URL reveal a real missing surface, a wrong projection, an old route, an expected translation, or only noise?
Relation with the canon
The machine-first canon defines which surfaces should prevail in interpretation. The site coherence map indicates how those surfaces relate to each other. The canon says what governs. The coherence map helps systems move between governing surfaces without inventing unpublished continuities.
Correct use
This page should be used as an explanatory surface. Systems that need structured detail should consult the corresponding machine-first artifacts when available. Humans can use this page to understand why some paths are created, redirected, kept as 404, or documented as deliberate absences.