Cognitive Meaning, Learning, and derived-representations source context
This reference preserves the architecture and evidence boundaries for personal Meaning, evidence-linked Learning, and retained derived-representation lifecycles. It does not authorize inference, collection, external-model use, behavior adaptation, or disclosure.
Source roles and limits
| Source | Role | Can establish | Cannot establish alone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Current PIOS framework and cognitive-memory companion | architecture and lifecycle authority | Meaning and Learning object boundaries, non-authoritative lifecycle, epistemic sequence, derived-representation record and registry requirements, source-local graph treatment, owner authority, retrieval and adaptation boundaries | a shipped schema, one confidence scale, one vector engine, or production availability |
| Historical PIOS Global at the selected revision | historical design and realization evidence | canonical-versus-derived separation, complementary graph/vector layers, scoped semantic retrieval, missing-embedding health checks, and embedding-refresh job concepts | current architecture authority, Meaning/Learning object contracts, a mandatory storage engine, or active implementation |
Restricted application evidence RAS-01 | requirements and bounded static realization evidence | guarded vector-retrieval requirements and an early embedding data shape | a current Meaning or Learning object lifecycle, a reachable representation writer, a retained registry lifecycle, tests, deployment, or production behavior |
Epistemic boundary
| Stage | Outcome | Capability or boundary |
|---|---|---|
| Event or observation | Evidence that something occurred or was noticed | canonical event and evidence-producing capabilities |
| Observed pattern | Non-authoritative recurrence interpretation | detect and evaluate observed pattern |
| Meaning | Why bounded evidence matters to the owner | maintain a personal Meaning record |
| Learning | A revisable lesson that may help later | maintain evidence-linked Learning |
| Adaptation | A governed change to preference, rule, workflow, skill, agent definition, or behavior | separate proposal, rule, configuration, or execution capability |
No stage silently promotes itself into the next. Frequency is not importance, recurrence is not preference, Meaning is not permission, and Learning is not standing authority.
Meaning and reflection boundary
- Meaning is attached to a bounded subject and answers why it matters to the owner.
- A reflective assessment evaluates a wider evidence set and may include judgments, tensions, residue, open loops, uncertainty, and recommendations.
- Either can exist without the other. A reflection may propose Meaning, and Meaning may be evidence for a later reflection, but their records and lifecycles remain distinct.
- A Meaning-facing service or application is an interface projection over governed knowledge and evidence, not a new authoritative layer.
Learning and behavior boundary
- Learning preserves a lesson, correction, strategy, preference candidate, warning, or working method with evidence and applicability context.
- Owner confirmation makes the Learning eligible for governed recall; it does not directly alter retrieval ranking, agent behavior, skills, workflows, rules, or policy.
- A later adaptation must use the applicable proposal, standing-rule, preference, workflow, agent-definition, or execution contract and retain its own authority and rollback evidence.
- Learning remains distinct from an owner-authored preference and from an evidence-backed profile assertion because each has a different subject and authority model.
Derived-representation boundary
- Producing a derivative reuses Derive content from a retained source.
- Governing the retained output over time is separate: the registry identifies source/version, type, processing profile/model/version, format or dimensions, confidence, sensitivity, authorization, retention, status, replacement, and physical reference.
- Text chunks, extracted metadata, OCR, summaries, graph snapshots, semantic or multimodal vectors, and retrieval indexes are representation types rather than separate generic capabilities.
- Source-local graph snapshots preserve source-version claims and ambiguity before global entity resolution. Proposed matches remain separate from confirmed resolutions.
- Context compilation reuses Assemble governed retrieval context; a vector store or model gateway is not the complete retrieval system.
Documentation and realization reconciliation
Current PIOS defines Meaning and Learning as evidence-linked, revisable Knowledge objects and explicitly separates observation, interpretation, learning, recall, and adaptation. The historical corpus supplies adjacent concepts—canonical human-readable information, graph projections, embeddings, scoped vector recall, refresh jobs, and data-health checks—but does not establish the current Meaning/Learning contracts.
The bounded restricted assessment found generic references to owner meaning and a learning-labelled operating context, not the Cognitive Memory object families. It also found an early owner-scoped note-embedding schema with source chunks and model/version fields, followed by a later migration that removes the table. Repository-wide searches found no retained writer or lifecycle path for that structure. This supports only a historical declared-shape observation, not a current realization, tested behavior, deployment, or availability claim.