Core meaning
- Capability purpose
- Permit useful processing without losing source identity, integrity, or auditability.
- Meaningful outcome
- A derivative, or a durable failure/cancellation outcome, is linked to its source and processing request.
- Boundaries — includes
- operation request, authority check, processing state, derivative identity, source link, failure handling, and completion evidence.
- Boundaries — excludes
- initial retention, context allocation, retrieval policy, provider selection, and downstream use of the derivative.
- Terms and concepts
derivative means a generated representation such as extracted text, summary, transcription, translation, classification, or conversion.
Interaction Contract MLEs
Produce a governed derivative
- Actor
- An authorized owner or governed processing workflow.
- Command / intent
- Apply a named transformation to a retained source.
- Current state
- The source exists and the requested operation is known.
- Policies / invariants
- Authority applies to the actual source; source identity remains intact; output provenance names source and operation; processing state is inspectable; retries do not create ambiguous success.
- Transition
- Record the request, process under policy, preserve the derivative's identity and source link, and record terminal state.
- Result
- A provenance-linked derivative or a reasoned failure/cancellation.
- Events / effects
- Status communications may be emitted; the derivative may become eligible for later capabilities.
- Unknowns
- Universal partial-result and human-correction semantics are not established.
Rules and defaults
Rules / invariants
- A derivative must not be represented as the unchanged source.
- Generated assertions remain attributable to their operation and source.
Recommended defaults
- Preserve the original unchanged and create a separately identified derivative.
- Process asynchronously when completion is not predictably immediate.
Communication MLEs
Processing state changed
- Purpose
- Make meaningful processing progress or terminal state visible.
- Trigger
- Processing reaches a reportable state.
- Audience
- Owner or initiating actor.
- Required meaning
- Identify the source, operation, state, and any required action without implying success prematurely.
- Representative example text
- Example; illustrative, not shipped copy: “Processing completed and a linked result is available.”
- Possible realizations
- event, update feed, inline status, notification, or API result.
Unknown / unresolved
Statement provenance
| Statement | Semantic class | Evidence status | Source / note |
|---|
| Source and derivative identities remain linked and distinct. | rule/invariant | sourced | Pilot provenance P02. |
| Separate derivative output is preferred. | recommended default | sourced | Historical design and current PIOS state treatment. |