docs(adr): ADR-0021 Epistemic Grade Policy — coherence is the only signal
Establishes a typed epistemic surface for stored claims without importing any source-trust bias. The status enum (COHERENT, CONTESTED, SPECULATIVE, FALSIFIED) describes a claim's position in the revision graph, not the credentials of its source. No tier in the schema carries inherent trust weight. Three commitments: 1. epistemic_status is a position in the revision graph, not a trust tier. Source labels (peer_consensus / outsider / established / unauthoritative) are explicitly excluded. 2. Non-hardening invariant: no reviewed claim, relation, or edge ever becomes unrevisable. No final/frozen/axiom flag may be added. Stage-3 inversion (versor-conjugate correction) is always available. 3. Coherence is the only admission signal. v1 is curator- mediated but bias-free at the schema level; v2 must add a structural coherence metric so the tag has geometric teeth and not just curator authority. Schema impact: PackMutationProposal.epistemic_status, review outcome carries status alongside ACCEPTED/REJECTED_IDENTITY, lexicon entries get an optional epistemic_status field, trace_hash folds in epistemic_status for replay verification. Named v2 gap: structural coherence metric recipe (cga_inner agreement with the existing reviewed field) is committed as the path forward. Implementation lands as a Phase 5 parallel-track item alongside Rust parity per ADR-0020.
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docs/decisions/ADR-0021-epistemic-grade-policy.md
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# ADR-0021 — Epistemic Grade Policy
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**Status:** Accepted
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**Date:** 2026-05-16
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**Authors:** Joshua Shay
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**Depends on:** ADR-0016 (Capability Roadmap), ADR-0017 (Agency
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Scope), ADR-0018 (Tool Use Scope), CLAUDE.md ("Truth is
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coherent").
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## Context
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CLAUDE.md already establishes the structural stance: *Truth is
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coherent. Preserve coherence in algebra, memory, articulation,
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and teaching.* The runtime already refuses several forms of
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implicit bias by construction:
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- No bulk corpus ingestion — frequency is rejected as a truth
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signal.
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- Teaching is proposal-only until reviewed — repetition does
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not promote.
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- Identity is structural, not learned from the corpus —
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override attempts are rejected.
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- Recall is exact CGA inner product — no learned ranking, no
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popularity weighting.
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What is missing is a typed surface that lets the system *say
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something* about the epistemic status of a stored claim.
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Without it, the runtime treats all reviewed claims uniformly:
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there is no way to mark a claim as "currently contested" or
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"eligible for inversion" except by removing it. Removal loses
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provenance; uniformity loses revisability.
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The deeper requirement, surfaced in working notes
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2026-05-16: **coherence is the only signal**. Not credentials.
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Not frequency. Not institutional consensus. Not outsider
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status. Not novelty. The architecture must not weight
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*sources* — it must weight *coherence with the existing field*,
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and it must keep every claim revisable forever.
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## Decision
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CORE adopts an **Epistemic Grade Policy** with three commitments:
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### 1. `epistemic_status` is a position in the revision graph, not a trust tier
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The status tag describes *how a claim sits in the field right
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now*, not where the claim came from. Source labels
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(`peer_consensus`, `outsider_empirical`, `established`,
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`unauthoritative`) are explicitly **not** part of the schema —
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they would re-import the bias this policy refuses.
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The status enum is:
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```text
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COHERENT — fits current field geometry; no incoherence
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with reviewed claims detected at admission.
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CONTESTED — incoherent with at least one reviewed claim;
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review pending; admissible but cannot drive
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downstream inferences that depend on its truth.
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SPECULATIVE — proposed; not yet reviewed for coherence;
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admissible only as a candidate, not as
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evidence.
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FALSIFIED — incoherent under accumulated evidence;
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eligible for Stage-3 inversion (versor-
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conjugate correction); retained for provenance.
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```
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No tier carries inherent trust weight. A `COHERENT` claim is
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not "more true" than a `CONTESTED` one — it is *currently
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incident-free*, and the moment new evidence makes it incoherent
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it becomes `CONTESTED`.
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### 2. Non-hardening invariant
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No reviewed claim, relation, or proposition-graph edge ever
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becomes unrevisable. Concretely:
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- Teaching is proposal-only (already true).
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- Reviewed claims expose a Stage-3 inversion path: a
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versor-conjugate correction that geometrically reverses the
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rotor encoding the wrong relation, rather than appending a
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contradictory claim alongside it.
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- No `final`, `frozen`, `axiom`, or `permanent` flag exists or
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may be added on the runtime data model. The closest such
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property already in the architecture is the field invariant
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`versor_condition(F) < 1e-6`, which is a *mathematical*
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closure check on the algebra — not an epistemic seal on a
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claim.
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This invariant is checkable: a test in
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`tests/test_epistemic_invariants.py` (to be added in the v1
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implementation PR) asserts that no schema field, relation, or
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flag in the public surface admits a non-revisable state.
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### 3. Coherence is the only admission signal
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`epistemic_status` transitions are *computed from coherence*,
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not asserted by source authority. At v1 the computation is
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intentionally simple and curator-mediated. At every later
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version, the curator's role shrinks toward a structural
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coherence metric.
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v1 admission rule (curator-mediated, but bias-free at the
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schema level):
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- The curator reviews a proposed claim against the existing
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reviewed field.
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- The curator's only admissible reasoning is *geometric*: does
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the claim cohere with already-reviewed claims, or does it
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produce incoherence?
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- The curator must not invoke source credentials, source
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popularity, or source institutional position as a
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justification. Curator notes that do invoke these are a
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review smell — to be flagged in v2 by an automated check on
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the review log.
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The status is the *output* of this review, not an input the
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curator may set by fiat outside of it.
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## Schema impact
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The schema lands where it needs to, per the runtime's existing
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typed surfaces:
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- `teaching/store.py::PackMutationProposal` — new field
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`epistemic_status: EpistemicStatus = SPECULATIVE` at proposal
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creation; transitions to `COHERENT` / `CONTESTED` /
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`FALSIFIED` only via the review path.
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- `teaching/review.py` — review outcomes carry the resulting
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`epistemic_status` alongside the existing
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`ACCEPTED` / `REJECTED_IDENTITY` axis. Accepting a proposal
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is not the same as ratifying it as `COHERENT` — the two are
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orthogonal and both required for admission as evidence.
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- `language_packs/data/*/lexicon.jsonl` — new optional field
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`epistemic_status` (default `COHERENT` for the seed
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vocabulary; deliberate-curator-reviewed at pack version
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bumps). No retroactive tagging without review.
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- `core/cognition/trace.py` — `epistemic_status` of any
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load-bearing claim in a turn is folded into the
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`trace_hash`, so replay can detect if a downstream surface
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was produced under a different epistemic frame than at the
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time of recall.
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The `proposition_graph` model does not need per-edge tagging in
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v1 — edges inherit status from the proposition node they
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attach to. v2 may revisit this for fine-grained relation
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typing.
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## Named gap (v2 work, explicit)
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The hardest unsolved piece is making the coherence test
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**structural**, not curator-asserted. v1 ships with a typed
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field and a non-hardening invariant; v2 must add the metric
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that bounds `epistemic_status` by geometric agreement with the
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existing reviewed field.
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Candidate v2 recipe (to be evaluated, not yet committed):
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```text
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admit(claim) requires:
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cga_inner(claim_versor, field_state) ≥ τ_admit
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AND no reviewed_relation R with cga_inner(claim, R) ≤ τ_reject
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```
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That metric — once specified, tested, and locked — is what
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takes the system from *"curator says it's coherent"* to
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*"the field's geometry confirms it's coherent."* Until then,
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v1 is honest about the gap: epistemic typing is real and
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typed, the coherence judgment behind a tag is still curator-
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mediated, and the architecture commits to closing that gap on
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a stated path.
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## What this ADR is NOT
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- **Not a source-trust schema.** No tier ranks sources.
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- **Not a censorship layer.** `FALSIFIED` claims are retained
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with provenance; they are not removed.
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- **Not a moral filter.** The system's internal motive
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remains structural ("be coherent"), not normative
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("save people from lies").
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- **Not language-specific.** The policy applies to any pack,
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any language, any domain. English / Hebrew / Greek /
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mathematics / physics packs all receive the same epistemic
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surface.
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## Consequences
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- New ADR-tracked work: implement the schema changes named in
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*Schema impact* above, with the non-hardening invariant
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test. This is a Phase 5 parallel-track item alongside Rust
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parity.
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- `docs/runtime_contracts.md` must add an *Epistemic surface*
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section documenting the four statuses, the non-hardening
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invariant, and the curator review rule.
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- Pack mutation review tooling must record curator
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justification text so a v2 automated check can flag
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source-authority-as-justification smells.
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- Trace-hash composition expands to include
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`epistemic_status` per load-bearing claim. Replay tests
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must continue to pass bit-for-bit.
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## Why this is correct *for this project*
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Every other architectural commitment in CORE is structural:
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algebra closure, exact recall, typed operators, reviewed
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teaching, deterministic replay. Adding `epistemic_status` as
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a tier-ranked trust schema would be the one place the
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architecture quietly imports a bias source. By making the
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status a *revision-graph position* instead, the policy stays
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load-bearing without breaking the rest of the architecture's
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shape. Coherence remains the only signal; the typed field
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just lets the runtime *say* where each claim sits relative to
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that signal.
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