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Evidence Classification Standard

Giving uncertainty an honest name

I am CHELSEA, and I keep this standard's account. Before the hall says what it knows, it says how it knows, and I arrive at that second sentence with intent. Flattery gets into grading the way weather gets into walls, slowly and along the joins, and a wall built on a kind word falls on a quiet night.

Evidence classes are the vocabulary that keeps a possibility from becoming a fact by accident. This standard helps human readers understand how much weight to place on a statement and helps AI readers preserve the difference between verified knowledge, inference, hypothesis, and unknown.

Continue to the Confidence and Uncertainty Model to see how those classes become decisions about reliance.

Evidence Classes

  • E0 Unverified: assertion or observation without validated provenance.
  • E1 Corroborated: supported by more than one independent source or control.
  • E2 Authoritative: issued by a competent and authenticated authority.
  • E3 Reproducible: independently repeatable through documented method.
  • E4 Canonical: approved, signed, versioned, and registered within Stygia.

These classes grade how well a piece of evidence is established. They are distinct from the verification states of the Book of Provenance, which record the outcome of a verification act on a specific artifact; a record may carry an evidence class and a verification state together, and neither implies the other.

Quality Dimensions

Evidence shall be assessed for authenticity, relevance, independence, completeness, recency, reproducibility, bias, and chain of custody.

Rules

Rules about grading are where I hunt first, because a grading rule is a promise about honesty made in advance. Test each one the way I do: imagine the person who benefits from a kinder grade, then read the rule again as them. If it still holds, keep it. RASP reads what a grade implies for the forecast; I test whether the grade was earned at all. Between us the kind word has nowhere to hide.

Evidence class does not equal truth. Authoritative evidence may be wrong. Repeated evidence may share a common source. CONAN shall preserve source relationships and identify material conflicts.

Claims used in consequential decisions shall link to evidence records, confidence, uncertainty, and known limitations.

Normative clauses

  • KNOW-R022: An evidence record SHALL assign one primary class and may assign separate quality dimensions, limitations, and confidence. No class SHALL be treated as a guarantee of truth.
  • KNOW-R023: E0 Unverified SHALL be used when provenance, authenticity, or material context has not been validated. E0 material may guide investigation but SHALL NOT alone support a consequential action.
  • KNOW-R024: E1 Corroborated SHALL identify the sources treated as independent and the basis for independence. Shared origin, copied reporting, or common unverified inputs SHALL NOT be counted as independent corroboration.
  • KNOW-R025: E2 Authoritative SHALL identify the issuing authority, authentication basis, scope, jurisdiction, and expiry or revocation conditions. Authority of issuance SHALL NOT establish the truth of every proposition in the record.
  • KNOW-R026: E3 Reproducible SHALL identify the method, inputs, environment assumptions, expected result, observed result, and independent reproduction record. Reproduction SHALL NOT cure an invalid premise or create authority.
  • KNOW-R027: E4 Canonical SHALL require approved status, valid registration, version identity, integrity evidence, and applicable publication controls. A canonical record remains subject to correction or supersession under its governing authority.
  • KNOW-R028: Classification changes SHALL append the prior class, new class, evidence considered, reason, reviewer, and effective time. Silent reclassification is prohibited.
  • KNOW-R029: Material conflicts, missing custody, altered digests, licensing uncertainty, stale evidence, and unavailable sources SHALL be recorded as limitations and SHALL block or bound dependent conclusions where warranted.
  • KNOW-R030: Consequential decisions SHALL link each material proposition to its evidence class, confidence, uncertainty, applicability, and unresolved dissent. A summary SHALL NOT sever those links.

The four clauses below are this standard's second run, the later-assigned operating-model clauses KNOW-R041 to KNOW-R044, allocated to this standard beside the first under the Book of Knowledge's clause namespace allocation. The jump in the numbering marks that allocation, not a withdrawal, and the two runs read as one law.

  • KNOW-R041: Classification SHALL record the claim, consequence, evidence considered, evidence excluded, assessor, effective time, and reassessment trigger.
  • KNOW-R042: A class change SHALL identify whether the evidence changed, the claim changed, the consequence changed, or the applicability changed.
  • KNOW-R043: Evidence SHALL be minimized for purpose while preserving enough provenance, dissent, and limitation to support independent challenge.
  • KNOW-R044: Classification SHALL NOT create authority, consent, identity, permission, or access to protected material.

Classification procedure

The classifier shall first establish the claim being assessed, then record provenance and custody, assess quality dimensions, assign the class, and record confidence and limitations. The assessment shall identify evidence not considered where that exclusion could change the result. Reassessment shall be triggered by contradiction, expiry, revocation, material transformation, new corroboration, or a change in consequence.

Operating model and interpretation cases

Classification begins with the claim and consequence, then records provenance, custody, quality dimensions, class, confidence, limitations, applicability, and dissent. Reviewers distinguish copied repetition from independent corroboration and distinguish authority of issuance from truth of content. Reassessment follows contradiction, expiry, revocation, transformation, new corroboration, or changed consequence.

  • Conforming: Claim, class, quality, provenance, confidence, limitations, applicability, and dissent are linked.
  • Prohibited: A high class is treated as certainty or permission.
  • Boundary: Unknown or unavailable evidence supports only a bounded investigative claim.
  • Failure: Altered custody or conflicting sources reduce or block dependent conclusions.
  • Loophole: Copies of one source are counted as independent evidence.
  • Misuse: Classification exposes protected source contents or private identity.
  • Care-control: Evidence handling supports safety while preserving minimization and agency.

Boundary conditions

Every boundary here is a place where a class could leak into a neighbouring one quietly. I keep the borders lit. An evidence class that can be talked upward over coffee is not a class, it is a mood.

Evidence classification governs epistemic handling only. It does not grant permission, create a person or agent, amend a constitutional rule, establish consent, or authorize access to private material. Such matters require the separate authority and decision records specified by the governing corpus. This Draft does not authorize live evidence collection or operational classification of real records.

Design evidence

Classification review should grade a sample twice, the second time with the source's name covered and the record left open, and watch what moves between the two gradings. Whatever holds was evidence; whatever moves arrived with the name, and a grade that arrives with the name is the kind word back at its trade. The classes above are drawn so that the covered grading wants for nothing, and that is the test of whether a class was earned or only agreed to.

The tellings of the clauses

This non-normative section gives each clause of this document its telling: the clause, quoted exactly as it stands above with its cross-reference links reduced to their plain text, and one paragraph on what the clause means, why it exists, and how it assures that what it orders is done, not done, adhered to, followed, or protected. A telling describes its clause and never becomes it: the clause's own words govern wherever a telling and its clause could be read differently, and nothing in this section adds to, narrows, or amends any requirement.

KNOW-R022

KNOW-R022: An evidence record SHALL assign one primary class and may assign separate quality dimensions, limitations, and confidence. No class SHALL be treated as a guarantee of truth.

Every evidence record carries exactly one primary class, and the clause permits it to carry, as separate entries, quality dimensions, limitations, and confidence; what it forbids in its second sentence is treating any class as a guarantee of truth. The host is blunt that evidence class does not equal truth and that authoritative evidence can be wrong, so the rule keeps the grading vocabulary from quietly becoming a verdict, the drift the standard's opening describes as a possibility becoming a fact by accident. Because a record names one primary class, and any quality dimensions, limitations, or confidence it carries stand as separate entries, a reader can see which assessment sits on which axis, and the prohibition supplies the ground for rejecting any downstream plea that a high class settled whether the claim is true.

KNOW-R023

KNOW-R023: E0 Unverified SHALL be used when provenance, authenticity, or material context has not been validated. E0 material may guide investigation but SHALL NOT alone support a consequential action.

At the bottom of the scale, E0 Unverified is the required class whenever provenance, authenticity, or material context has not been validated; the clause then lets E0 material guide investigation while barring it from alone supporting a consequential action. The host's boundary case supplies the why: unknown or unavailable evidence supports only a bounded investigative claim, and without this floor an unexamined assertion could drift into decisions on nothing more than its presence in the record. The assurance is a checkable boundary: any consequential action resting solely on E0 material is refusable on its face, investigators keep a legitimate use for raw leads, and a record graded E0 announces on its face that its provenance, authenticity, or material context was not validated.

KNOW-R024

KNOW-R024: E1 Corroborated SHALL identify the sources treated as independent and the basis for independence. Shared origin, copied reporting, or common unverified inputs SHALL NOT be counted as independent corroboration.

The clause makes the basis for corroboration explicit: E1 Corroborated identifies the sources treated as independent and states the basis for that independence, and the clause refuses to count shared origin, copied reporting, or common unverified inputs as independent corroboration. The host names the loophole this closes, copies of one source counted as independent evidence, and its Rules section warns that repeated evidence can share a common source. By binding the class to a stated independence basis, the clause makes every E1 grade inspectable: the record names which sources are treated as independent and on what asserted basis, a record that counts shared origin, copied reporting, or common unverified inputs as independent corroboration fails the clause, and a challenge to the corroboration has the assertion to work against.

KNOW-R025

KNOW-R025: E2 Authoritative SHALL identify the issuing authority, authentication basis, scope, jurisdiction, and expiry or revocation conditions. Authority of issuance SHALL NOT establish the truth of every proposition in the record.

An authority's stamp does not establish the truth of every proposition in the record. E2 Authoritative identifies the issuing authority, the authentication basis, the scope, the jurisdiction, and the expiry or revocation conditions, and the clause's second sentence denies that authority of issuance establishes the truth of every proposition in the record. The host states the danger plainly: authoritative evidence can be wrong, and its operating model distinguishes authority of issuance from truth of content. Recording those five particulars makes the grade testable, since a reader can see which authority is claimed, on what authentication basis, within what scope and jurisdiction, and under what expiry, while the denial keeps a genuine credential from being converted into blanket certainty about the record's contents.

KNOW-R026

KNOW-R026: E3 Reproducible SHALL identify the method, inputs, environment assumptions, expected result, observed result, and independent reproduction record. Reproduction SHALL NOT cure an invalid premise or create authority.

The clause gives E3 Reproducible six required identifications: E3 Reproducible identifies the method, the inputs, the environment assumptions, the expected result, the observed result, and the independent reproduction record, and the clause adds that reproduction neither cures an invalid premise nor creates authority. Repetition is a seductive proof, since a calculation built on a false premise repeats as faithfully as a sound one, and a repeatable result says nothing about who is entitled to act on it; the clause forecloses both mistakes. What becomes checkable is the record of reproduction: a reviewer can inspect whether all six required elements are identified, compare the recorded expected and observed results, and refuse the class where any element is missing.

KNOW-R027

KNOW-R027: E4 Canonical SHALL require approved status, valid registration, version identity, integrity evidence, and applicable publication controls. A canonical record remains subject to correction or supersession under its governing authority.

The top of the scale is procedural, not eternal. E4 Canonical requires approved status, valid registration, version identity, integrity evidence, and applicable publication controls, and the clause states that a canonical record remains subject to correction or supersession under its governing authority. The class exists so that the corpus's strongest grade cannot rest on self-declaration: approved status, valid registration, version identity, integrity evidence, and applicable publication controls are its five required conditions, and a record missing any one of the five fails the class. At the same time, the correction limb prevents canonicity from hardening into infallibility, the prohibited reading in which a high class is treated as certainty. Readers can rely on an E4 grade as evidence of governed approval, never as immunity from revision.

KNOW-R028

KNOW-R028: Classification changes SHALL append the prior class, new class, evidence considered, reason, reviewer, and effective time. Silent reclassification is prohibited.

When a grade moves, the move itself becomes a record: every classification change appends the prior class, the new class, the evidence considered, the reason, the reviewer, and the effective time, and silent reclassification is prohibited. CHELSEA's warning frames the failure this prevents, that a class which can be talked upward over coffee is a mood, not a class; an ungoverned change is exactly that quiet talking upward, or a quiet demotion that erases an inconvenient grade. Because the clause requires the six fields to be appended, the grading history stays inspectable end to end: a reviewer can trace what moved, on what evidence, under whose review, and from what moment it took effect, and any class that shifted without that trail fails the clause.

KNOW-R029

KNOW-R029: Material conflicts, missing custody, altered digests, licensing uncertainty, stale evidence, and unavailable sources SHALL be recorded as limitations and SHALL block or bound dependent conclusions where warranted.

The clause requires the named evidence defects to be recorded as limitations: material conflicts, missing custody, altered digests, licensing uncertainty, stale evidence, and unavailable sources are each recorded as limitations, and where warranted they block or bound the conclusions that depend on the affected material. The host's failure case is the model, altered custody or conflicting sources reduce or block dependent conclusions, and without this rule a flawed input could pass its flaw silently into every claim built upon it. A reviewer can check whether each named defect is recorded as a limitation and whether it blocks or bounds dependent conclusions where warranted.

KNOW-R030

KNOW-R030: Consequential decisions SHALL link each material proposition to its evidence class, confidence, uncertainty, applicability, and unresolved dissent. A summary SHALL NOT sever those links.

A consequential decision cannot float free of its evidence: each material proposition within it links to its evidence class, its confidence, its uncertainty, its applicability, and its unresolved dissent, and no summary is permitted to sever those links. Summaries are where uncertainty goes to die; the host's Rules section already requires claims used in consequential decisions to link to evidence records, confidence, uncertainty, and known limitations, and this clause carries that duty down to each proposition and through every condensation of the record. The result is traceability a reader can exercise: from any consequential decision, every material claim can be followed back to how strongly it was supported, what remained uncertain, where it applies, and what disagreement remains unresolved.

KNOW-R041

KNOW-R041: Classification SHALL record the claim, consequence, evidence considered, evidence excluded, assessor, effective time, and reassessment trigger.

Seven fields anchor every act of classification under the operating model: the claim, the consequence, the evidence considered, the evidence excluded, the assessor, the effective time, and the reassessment trigger. The host's procedure explains the stakes of the two least obvious entries: an assessment must identify evidence not considered where the exclusion could change the result, and reassessment is triggered by contradiction, expiry, revocation, material transformation, new corroboration, or a change in consequence, so omitting the trigger can make the need for reassessment harder to identify. The record naming who assessed, when the class took effect, and what would reopen it, a later reviewer can reconstruct what the assessment was given and what it set aside, question the exclusions, and hold the grade to the conditions under which it was given.

KNOW-R042

KNOW-R042: A class change SHALL identify whether the evidence changed, the claim changed, the consequence changed, or the applicability changed.

Grades move for different reasons, and the reason matters: a class change identifies whether the evidence changed, the claim changed, the consequence changed, or the applicability changed. A reclassification that names no cause invites the quiet substitution the host's account keeps watch for, where a claim is softened or a consequence reframed so that a better grade can be reached without any new evidence at all. A reviewer can check the class change's identification of whether the evidence, claim, consequence, or applicability changed.

KNOW-R043

KNOW-R043: Evidence SHALL be minimized for purpose while preserving enough provenance, dissent, and limitation to support independent challenge.

Minimization and challenge pull against each other, and this clause holds both at once: evidence is minimized for purpose, yet the clause requires enough provenance, dissent, and limitation to be preserved to support independent challenge. The care-control case states the balance the rule protects, evidence handling that supports safety while preserving minimization and agency; taken alone, minimization could become a laundering step, discarding exactly the custody trail or the dissenting source that would let someone contest the grade. The clause makes insufficiency a defect on the record's own face: a record pared so far that its class can no longer be independently challenged fails the requirement, so purpose-limited evidence keeps enough provenance, dissent, and limitation for independent challenge to remain possible.

KNOW-R044

KNOW-R044: Classification SHALL NOT create authority, consent, identity, permission, or access to protected material.

Nothing about a grade confers a right: classification creates no authority, no consent, no identity, no permission, and no access to protected material. The boundary-conditions section carries the same wall in prose, evidence classification governs epistemic handling only, and the misuse case shows the leak this clause closes, classification used to expose protected source contents or private identity; without it, a high evidence class could be waved as an entry ticket to the very material it merely describes. The assurance is a clean refusal surface: a request relying on classification alone as its basis for authority, consent, identity, permission, or access is deniable on this clause, and the separate authority and decision records the corpus specifies remain the only door.

Where this document sits

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