Procedure: Deterministic, Replayable, Binary
Verification is mechanical. Evidence either reproduces exactly or fails. No sponsor cooperation is required for a pass/fail verification outcome.
Boundary Contract
We bind all causal variables influencing terminal state into declared inputs and enforce that closure at build and runtime boundaries through dependency isolation, canonicalization of representations, and reproducible execution.
Authoritative provenance is a trust-weighting attribute, not an availability guarantee. When required authoritative inputs are unavailable, Sovrient records INPUT_UNAVAILABLE, preserves acquisition evidence, and prevents release of artifacts whose required inputs are not verifiably bound.
ADMISSIBILITY CONTRACT: admissible(terminal_state) iff terminal_state = F(packet_bytes, spec_bytes, verifier_mode) AND F is total and deterministic AND no undeclared dependency is reachable.
SCOPE: INTEGRITY + INTERNAL CONSISTENCY VERIFICATION ONLY
Semantic-Binding Evidence System
Sovrient is a governed evidence system for semantic-binding claims. A claim is not trusted because it sounds authoritative. A term is not trusted because it has a name. A model behavior is not trusted because it appeared once.
Sovrient connects claims to operational substrate, tests whether behavior follows that substrate, records the result with explicit boundaries, and preserves the supporting evidence through canonical manifests, receipts, and append-only maintenance.
BOUNDARY: The receipt preserves a manifest-bound evidence package. It does not validate scientific truth, certify model safety, prove model intent, or replace independent reproduction.
| Layer | Question | Public boundary |
|---|---|---|
| Surface handle | What word, label, instruction, or claim is being tested? | A handle enters as a candidate pointer; it is not admitted by name alone. |
| Operational substrate | What does the handle dereference to? | Doctrine, schemas, prompts, profiles, reports, hashes, tests, and review boundaries. |
| Behavioral test | Did model behavior follow the substrate rather than merely the wording? | Evidence lanes report scored behavior, not internal model intent. |
| PCBA interpretation Prompted cross-boundary adversarial review |
What does the result mean and not mean? | Findings, boundaries, residual risks, and non-claims stay attached to the result. |
| Canonical manifest | What evidence package is being preserved? | Files, hashes, repo state, gitlink state, sidecars, reports, and non-claims are included or hash-bound. |
| Receipt | Can the evidence package be checked later? | A receipt is receipt-ready until actually signed and timestamped; a sealed receipt is tamper-evident from sealing onward. |
| Maintenance | How are later repairs handled? | Maintenance is append-only and must not rewrite the sealed evidence story. |
| External trust | Who else verified or attested it? | External trust exists only when independent reproduction, audit, provider attestation, or hardware attestation actually exists. |
Receipt States
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Manifest exists but is not sealed. |
| Pre-seal | Manifest is canonicalized and ready for signing. |
| Sealed | Manifest hash or Merkle root has been signed and timestamped. |
| Resealed | Later maintenance created a new receipt referencing a prior sealed state. |
| Attested | External reproduction, audit, provider attestation, or hardware attestation has been added. |
Procedure
| Step | Action | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Fetch bundle artifacts and sidecars (.sha256, .sig). |
All required files present. |
| 02 | Validate file integrity (sha256sum -c). |
Digest equality true for all files. |
| 03 | Validate witness signatures (gpg --verify). |
Signature and key fingerprint match expected signer. |
| 04 | Recompute Merkle root from range lines and compare to declared root. | Root equality true. |
| 05 | Recompute day inclusion proofs for selected samples. | Inclusion path resolves to same root. |
| 06 | Replay deterministic run at declared params. | Replay hash equals published hash. |
Verifier Kit
Bundle verifier package and reproducibility scripts are treated as governed artifacts. The RC2 date below is an archived/static verifier baseline, not a stale live-state indicator.
RC2 is a stability label for the locked public verification kit, not an unfinished service status. It remains appropriate while adoption requires reproducible baselines over moving verifier semantics; a future non-RC label will be introduced only with a new signed baseline.
Crypto-agility telemetry: crypto_agility_latest.json
Date And Freshness Labels
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Site build date | The date this public website surface was generated or deployed. It does not replace artifact dates inside evidence bundles. |
| Latest artifact date | The most recent dated evidence artifact available for the relevant lane or catalog. |
| Active lane state | The current operational posture for a lane: live, preview, bounded seed, archived, held, or unavailable. |
| Archived/static baseline | A deliberately locked historical baseline. Older dates here indicate frozen reference state, not abandonment by themselves. |
| Verifier kit baseline | The current verifier kit is labeled LOCKED PUBLIC BASELINE: RC2 (2026-02-25); that is a reproducibility baseline for this public procedure, not a freshness warning or release-candidate caveat for the service. |
| Latest sealed receipt date | The newest receipt date only applies to receipts actually emitted for a lane or evaluation family. |