Documentation · Protocol
Evidence vocabulary
Every claim states how it came to be known. That is the difference between “Git proves commit X descended from Y” and “a model believes this code implements MIDI scheduling”. Both are useful; they are not the same claim.
Three tiers
The Evidence Threshold control on every registry surface dissolves anything weaker than the selected tier. Moving toward verified is how speculative inference leaves the picture without being deleted from the record.
| Tier | Label | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| inferred | Inferred | Proposed by a model or read off ancestry. Nothing has confirmed it yet. |
| reviewed | Reviewed | Backed by static analysis, declared metadata or an upstream maintainer. |
| verified | Verified | Backed by an executed test, a runtime measurement or a human sign-off. |
An earlier draft of this page listed OBSERVED and DECLARED. Those words are not in the live vocabulary. The registry uses the three tiers above, plus the nine codes below.
Nine codes
Codes follow the spirit of Gene Ontology evidence codes: a short machine token, a human label, a glyph, and a tier. The glyph is never used alone.
| Code | Label | Tier | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| HVRHuman verified. A person inspected this claim and confirmed it. | Human verified | verified | A person inspected this claim and confirmed it. |
| TSTAutomated test. A test suite executed and asserted this behaviour. | Automated test | verified | A test suite executed and asserted this behaviour. |
| RUNRuntime observation. Measured from a real or sandboxed execution. | Runtime observation | verified | Measured from a real or sandboxed execution. |
| STAStatic analysis. Derived from parsing source without executing it. | Static analysis | reviewed | Derived from parsing source without executing it. |
| DEPDependency metadata. Read from a manifest, lockfile or SBOM. | Dependency metadata | reviewed | Read from a manifest, lockfile or SBOM. |
| UPRUpstream maintainer. Asserted by the maintainer of the upstream project. | Upstream maintainer | reviewed | Asserted by the maintainer of the upstream project. |
| SECSecurity scanner. Reported by an advisory database or scanner. | Security scanner | reviewed | Reported by an advisory database or scanner. |
| PHYLineage inference. Inferred from ancestry or capability homology. | Lineage inference | inferred | Inferred from ancestry or capability homology. |
| AIIAI-inferred. Proposed by a model and not yet verified by test or human. | AI-inferred | inferred | Proposed by a model and not yet verified by test or human. |
Lineage states
A record also carries a lineage state — a rendering concern that pairs colour, glyph, pattern and text so no state is hue-only.
✓ Verified solid solid
◈ Reviewed grid solid
◌ Inferred dots dotted
⇢ Proposed diagonal dashed
⊘ Quarantined frozen dashed
✕ Rejected cross dotted