The words, and what we mean by them

The party that performs the adjudication. It receives a proposal, determines permit or deny against the authority written in advance, and signs the determination. It applies that authority, not a judgment of its own, and it rules on nothing else: not the soundness of the authority, not the truth of the facts. It cannot propose and it cannot act, and that restraint is what qualifies it to judge. How ours works is not described on this site.

A determination, made before an action, of whether that action is inside the authority granted. Distinct from detection, which happens afterward, and from monitoring, which happens alongside and changes nothing.

Our shorthand for the adjudicating role, borrowed from the constitutional structure: separate from the party that writes the authority and from the party that acts, and able only to judge whether the act was inside the authority. An architectural role, not a governmental one, and it belongs to the architecture, not to ProofSmith.

A statement by a party that something is true. Useful, and not the same as evidence. An attestation is worth what the party making it is worth.

An attestation by a party about its own conduct, resting on records that party holds. The default arrangement almost everywhere, for the good reason that it is the cheapest thing to build.

A record admitted in court without a live witness, as the Federal Rules of Evidence allow for certified electronic records. It establishes that the record is genuine. It does not establish that the action it records was permitted, and it still rests on a certification by a person the party offering the record chooses.

What a party was permitted to do, written in advance, by someone other than the party that will act. Delegated authority, commander’s intent, rules of engagement, credit policy, a standard of care.

Whether a control can stop an action, as against merely record it. One of the two axes we score every system on.

Whether a third party can check a decision without the cooperation of the system that produced it. The other axis, and much the harder one.

Any party that proposes an action — a human, a machine, or an AI. A proposer proposes. It does not decide.

The record of where an artifact came from and what has been done to it since.

The chain that connects an authority to a decision, that decision to an action, and that action to evidence an authorized party outside the system can check.

The short descriptor for what the architecture produces, and the words the mark on every page carries. Independent: separate from the system that acts and from the party that built it. Provable: checkable by a party outside the system. Governed: the action was permitted, not merely observed. Decision: the exact action the agent tried to take, the policy that applied, and the outcome. Lineage: the chain from authority through decision to action to evidence.

The layer where provenance is established, a decision is made on authority, and independently verifiable proof of that decision is produced. It serves models, agents and applications rather than competing with them.

Used so loosely across this field as to be nearly empty. We use it only where a control can determine an outcome. Where a control can only observe one, the word is monitoring, and we say monitoring.