Unified Atomic Claims

Unified Atomic Claims

Everything in Σ OVERWATCH is made of Claims.

The Claim Primitive

A Claim is the indivisible unit of asserted truth. It is the atom from which every governance structure is composed. Before Claims existed as a first-class primitive, truth lived in scattered places — inside episode context blobs, provenance chains, evidence ref arrays, and freeform content objects. Claims unify all of this into a single, validated, decaying, graph-linked, sealable object.

Schema: specs/claim.schema.json Docs: docs/19-claim-primitive.md

Anatomy of a Claim

Every Claim has:

Field	What it does
claimId	Stable ID (CLAIM-YYYY-NNNN). Never reused.
statement	One sentence, testable. The atomic truth.
scope	Where + when + context. Bounded applicability.
truthType	Epistemic class: observation, inference, assumption, forecast, norm, constraint
confidence	0.00–1.00 score + human explanation
statusLight	🟢🟡🔴 derived from confidence + source quality
sources[]	Where the truth came from (typed, with reliability)
evidence[]	What artifacts support it (typed, with method)
owner	Accountable role (not a person)
halfLife	How long before confidence halves. Includes expiresAt + refreshTrigger.
graph	Typed edges: dependsOn, contradicts, supersedes, patches, supports
seal	Immutable hash + version + append-only patchLog

Truth Types

Type	Meaning	Decays?
observation	Directly measured	Yes — sensors drift
inference	Derived from evidence	Yes — premises change
assumption	Taken as given	Yes — context shifts
forecast	Predictive	Yes — future arrives
norm	Policy or standard	Slow — policy updates
constraint	Hard boundary	Rarely — regulatory change

Status Light Rules

Light	Rule
🟢 green	confidence ≥ 0.80 AND ≥ 1 high-reliability source
🟡 yellow	confidence 0.50–0.79 OR mixed-reliability sources
🔴 red	confidence < 0.50 OR unresolved contradiction in graph.contradicts

Half-Life and Decay

Claims are not eternal. Every Claim has a halfLife specifying how long its confidence remains valid. After one half-life, confidence should be halved. The expiresAt timestamp is computed from timestampCreated + halfLife. The refreshTrigger says what forces re-evaluation: expiry, contradiction, new source, or schedule.

A Claim with halfLife.value: 0 is perpetual (constraints, immutable policies).

Claim Graph

Claims form a directed graph:

Edge	Meaning
dependsOn	Requires these claims to be true
contradicts	In active conflict — triggers 🔴
supersedes	Replaces a prior claim (never overwrite)
patches	Patch IDs that modified meaning/confidence
supports	Provides evidence for other claims

Claim-Native DLR

The Decision Log Record has been refactored to be claim-native. Every DLR is now:

1. A categorised list of claimRefs across five stages: context → rationale → action → verification → outcome
2. 2. A rationaleGraph — directed edges between claims with types and confidence weights

   3. 3. A freshnessSnapshot — was every claim fresh at decision time?

      4. Each claimRef carries a decision-time snapshot: the claim's confidence, statusLight, truthType, and freshness at the moment the decision was made. This means audit works even after claims expire or get superseded.

      5. Schema: specs/dlr.schema.json

      6. Docs: docs/20-dlr-claim-native.md

      7. Composability

Once Claims exist as primitives, everything becomes a graph operation:

Operation	In Claim Terms
DLR	Subgraph query: which claims + edges governed this decision?
Canon	Bless operation: promote claimIds to long-term memory
Drift	Edge-weight change: confidence decayed, contradiction emerged, half-life expired
Retcon	Supersede: create new claim version, link via supersedes, preserve original
Patch	Append to seal.patchLog: modify without breaking immutability
IRIS	Graph walk: follow rationaleGraph edges to answer WHY / WHAT_CHANGED / WHAT_DRIFTED
Reflection	Aggregation: claim confidence distributions across episodes

Diagrams

See archive/mermaid/27-claim-primitive.md and archive/mermaid/28-dlr-claim-native.md for visual architecture.

Related Pages

• Schemas — all JSON Schema specs
• • Contracts — DTE, Action Contract, Episode
  • • Coherence Ops Mapping — DLR/RS/DS/MG
    • • Drift → Patch — drift lifecycle
      • • Sealing & Episodes — immutability model
        • • IRIS — query resolution engine
          • • LLM Data Model — canonical record envelope