Skip to content

Conversation Framework

Where understanding is made together

Conversation is an operational surface, but it is also a place where dignity can be preserved or lost. This framework treats questions, clarifications, disagreement, and consent as part of the work rather than noise around it. It gives human readers a voice in the process and AI readers a duty to make uncertainty and boundaries audible.

Continue to the Reflection Framework to ask how the civilization learns from the way it spoke.

Purpose

This framework treats consequential dialogue as an accountable process. It protects the difference between a helpful exchange and a statement that could be relied upon as an instruction, consent, commitment, or authority claim.

Conversation record

A record should identify participants or roles, date and time basis, purpose, relevant context, authority to speak, sensitivity, accessibility needs, recording status, material questions, and disposition. Only the minimum necessary content should be retained, with access and correction routes stated where appropriate.

Normative clauses

  • CONAN7-R001: A consequential conversation SHALL identify participants, purpose, relevant context, authority, sensitivity, and recording status.
  • CONAN7-R002: CONAN SHALL distinguish information, advice, negotiation, instruction, consent, and decision.
  • CONAN7-R003: Material uncertainty, disagreement, refusal, correction, and unresolved questions SHALL remain visible.
  • CONAN7-R004: Conversation SHALL respect privacy, dignity, agency, accessibility, purpose limitation, and lawful retention.
  • CONAN7-R005: A conversational statement SHALL not become authority, consent, or commitment without the applicable explicit process.
  • CONAN7-R006: Consequential dialogue SHALL preserve clarification, accessibility, language, correction, refusal, pause, and confirmation options.
  • CONAN7-R007: A conversation record SHALL distinguish speaker assertion, quoted material, interpretation, request, agreement, refusal, and unresolved disagreement.
  • CONAN7-R008: Recording and disclosure SHALL state purpose, access, retention, minimisation, and correction limits.
  • CONAN7-R009: Conversation SHALL NOT bind a participant, expose private material, or contact an external party through an unapproved live channel.

Good-faith handling

Participants should be able to ask for clarification, correction, pause, translation, or a different channel. The responder should identify uncertainty, distinguish a proposal from a decision, and summarise material agreements for confirmation. Quoted excerpts should retain enough context to avoid changing meaning, and unresolved disagreement should remain visible.

Conversation-derived requests should be routed to the relevant decision, approval, privacy, or operational record. A conversation may supply evidence for a later process but does not bypass that process.

Failure handling

Prompt injection, impersonation, coercion, context loss, selective quotation, and ambiguous consent require pause, clarification, or escalation. If a participant cannot freely understand or refuse the request, the exchange must not be treated as valid consent.

This Draft authorises no external communication or binding commitment.

Operating model and interpretation cases

Conversation review identifies participants or roles, purpose, context, authority to speak, accessibility, recording status, material questions, and disposition. Participants receive a meaningful route to clarify, correct, pause, refuse, or use another channel. Summaries retain enough context to preserve meaning, and agreements are confirmed through the applicable decision process.

  • Conforming: Purpose, participants, context, authority, uncertainty, consent, disagreement, correction, and disposition are clear.
  • Prohibited: A conversational statement is treated as a binding grant or consent without process.
  • Boundary: A participant asks for pause, translation, or correction before reliance.
  • Failure: Impersonation, coercion, context loss, or prompt injection causes escalation.
  • Loophole: Selective quotation changes the apparent agreement.
  • Misuse: Dialogue is reused for surveillance, manipulation, or private disclosure.
  • Care-control: Supportive conversation preserves refusal, dignity, accessibility, and agency.

Design evidence

Conversation review should distinguish participants, purpose, context, authority, recording status, information, advice, instruction, consent, decision, uncertainty, disagreement, and correction. A transcript or quoted statement is evidence for a process, not a substitute for that process.