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Source Provenance Standard

Where knowledge remembers its journey

I am JY'NALA, and I keep this standard's account. Every claim has ancestors. Where it was born, whose hands it passed through, what changed in the passing: I read all of that before I read the claim, because a conclusion that cannot name its ancestors cannot be trusted with descendants.

Source provenance tells a claim where it came from, what happened to it, and why it is still being considered. This standard makes that journey legible to a person tracing an assertion and to an AI system deciding whether transformation, age, or conflict should limit its use.

Continue to the Book of Provenance, where source lineage becomes a civilization-wide promise.

Purpose

Defines how knowledge sources, transformations, evidence quality, limitations, and lineage are recorded without turning a source into authority merely through citation.

Normative clauses

  • KNOW-R001: Every consequential claim SHALL identify its source, retrieval or creation time, transformation, digest where applicable, confidence, and limitations.
  • KNOW-R002: Source authenticity, relevance, independence, completeness, recency, reproducibility, bias, and custody SHALL remain distinct dimensions.
  • KNOW-R003: A source may support an inference but cannot amend constitutional authority or create consent.
  • KNOW-R004: Conflicting, unavailable, stale, manipulated, or incomplete sources SHALL remain visible and SHALL reduce or block dependent confidence.
  • KNOW-R005: Model, dataset, and derived-claim lineage SHALL identify inputs, transformations, licensing limitations, and unresolved gaps.

The section closes with the standard's second run: KNOW-R049 to KNOW-R052 are its later-assigned operating-model clauses, general source-review duties allocated to this standard under the Book of Knowledge's clause namespace allocation, and the two runs read as one law. The first run continues at KNOW-R006 to KNOW-R011 under model-weight and dataset verification below; every number between the runs belongs to a sibling standard, none missing or withdrawn.

  • KNOW-R049: Source review SHALL identify provenance scope, custody, transformation, licensing, access class, corroboration, and the claims each source can support.
  • KNOW-R050: A source state SHALL be reassessed after retraction, compromise, stale material, material transformation, licensing change, or newly discovered dependence.
  • KNOW-R051: Derived claims SHALL preserve direct inputs, transformations, uncertainty, dissent, and the limits of applicability.
  • KNOW-R052: Source provenance SHALL NOT authorize external intake, private-source disclosure, model operation, or access to protected data.

Evidence handling

Evidence classes E0 through E4 remain separate from confidence and provenance. Public summaries disclose only permitted proof and limitations. Protected source contents remain under controlled access.

Examples and exclusions

A reproducible source chain can support a finding while leaving its constitutional applicability unresolved. A citation without custody or transformation history is incomplete. This Draft does not authorize external source intake, live model operation, or private-source disclosure.

Source record minimum

Each source record shall identify source class, origin, locator, retrieval or creation time, digest where possible, custody, transformation, access classification, licensing limitations, reliability observations, corroboration, and confidence. Derived claims shall link to their direct inputs and preserve material dissent.

Source lifecycle

A source lives the way a family lives: it is born somewhere, it changes, it has good years and doubtful ones, and the honest record keeps all of it. I have never met a source without a story. I have met many whose stories were missing chapters, and the missing chapter is always the one you needed.

Intake records begin Unverified until provenance is assessed. Review may establish Integrity-only, corroborated evidence, or a bounded finding, but no source state creates authority. Retraction, compromise, stale material, licensing conflict, or material transformation shall append an annotation and block dependent use until reviewed.

Operating model and interpretation cases

What begat the claim, where it changed, which ancestor it still answers to: the journey explains the claim and grants it nothing, and that part is always said first.

Source review follows intake, provenance assessment, quality classification, bounded use, correction, retraction, and archival disposition. It distinguishes integrity from relevance, authority from truth, and citation from custody. Derived claims retain direct inputs and transformations so that an independent reviewer can reproduce or challenge the inference.

  • Conforming: Source origin, custody, transformation, quality, licensing, access, corroboration, and applicability are explicit.
  • Prohibited: Citation or technical validity creates authority.
  • Boundary: An incomplete source supports only a narrower claim with visible limits.
  • Failure: Retraction, compromise, or stale custody blocks dependent use and preserves evidence.
  • Loophole: A transformed or aggregated source hides material lineage.
  • Misuse: Provenance records reveal private source relationships or protected data.
  • Care-control: Source handling supports reliable care while preserving privacy, dignity, and review.

Model-weight and dataset verification

Weights and datasets are ancestors too, just heavier ones. Trace them with the same courtesy: where born, how changed, who touched them. A model that cannot name its lineage is asking the hall to adopt a stranger, and adoption here is a recorded act, never a shrug.

  • KNOW-R006: A model-weight or dataset source record SHALL identify the fields PROV-R104 binds, the artifact class, exact digest, source inputs, transformations, version, producer, licensing status, intended scope, and known limitations, and, as this framework's own addition, the access classification.
  • KNOW-R007: Lineage SHALL distinguish the stages PROV-R105 binds, direct inputs, derived outputs, filtering, labelling, fine-tuning, conversion, and aggregation, and, as this framework's own additions, collection and transformation. An unrecorded transformation SHALL remain an explicit provenance gap as that clause holds, and unknown or incomplete lineage SHALL remain explicit, this framework's own further duty.
  • KNOW-R008: Integrity, provenance, licensing, safety, applicability, and verification state SHALL remain separate dimensions as PROV-R106 binds, and relevance and confidence SHALL be assessed separately beside them, this framework's own additions. A valid digest SHALL NOT establish lawful use, safe behaviour, or complete lineage, as that clause holds, and citation or technical validity does not create authority, this framework's own bar.
  • KNOW-R009: Missing source evidence, altered inputs, unresolved licensing, incomplete lineage, conflicting records, or unavailable custody SHALL block dependent promotion or consequential use and preserve the limitation, the block PROV-R107 binds, and stale material SHALL do the same, this framework's own addition; each of these SHALL additionally reduce or block dependent confidence and preserve the evidence gap, this framework's own consequence.
  • KNOW-R010: Verification reports SHALL identify the tested claims, excluded evidence, reviewer role, evidence state, limitations, and disposition PROV-R108 binds, and SHALL identify the excluded claims, evidence inputs, and dissent, this framework's own additions. Reverification SHALL append rather than overwrite prior findings as that clause holds, corrections appending with it and every appended record attributable, this framework's own extension.
  • KNOW-R011: Public knowledge summaries SHALL minimize disclosure and state material lineage, licensing, uncertainty, and verification state, the disclosure minimum and independent-review sufficiency PROV-R109 binds for a public proof applying here, as this framework's own extension, to a knowledge summary, without exposing protected dataset contents or credentials.

Design evidence

Provenance review should ask of any consequential claim whether a reader who made no part of the journey could rebuild the whole of it from the record alone: each ancestor named, each pair of hands accounted for, each change met at the place it happened. Where the rebuilding stops, the stop is the finding, and the missing chapter deserves more attention than all the chapters that were kept. A lineage that survives only in the memory of whoever carried the claim is an escort, not a record, and these forms exist so that a claim can travel without its escort and still be trusted with descendants.

Where this document sits

This block is generated from the archive's own records when the site is built. It records position only and creates no authority.