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Experimental source grounding#

Verifier Standard (VSTD) source grounding is a direct-module version 0.1 experiment. It replays one registered interpretation over exact retained source bytes. It does not infer a ground from a declaration, a digest, certificate authorship, or a stored result.

Terminology: JavaScript Object Notation (JSON); Secure Hash Algorithm 256-bit (SHA-256); Unicode Transformation Format, 8-bit (UTF-8); identifier (ID). Digests, byte sizes, item counts, and IDs are dimensionless unless a field says otherwise.

1. Records#

All records use strict canonical JSON bytes: UTF-8, sorted object keys, no duplicate keys, no extra whitespace, and no unsupported values. A decoder rejects a reserialization mismatch. Source and certificate evidence are selected by lowercase sha256: digest and exact byte size.

VSTD-SOURCE-GROUNDING-0.1 declares exactly:

• a source byte reference;
• a semantic frame with frame ID, proposition language, vocabulary digest, and sorted top-level facets;
• an interpretation profile, mechanism, inert mechanism-profile digest, and checker coordinate;
• one ground proposition containing proposition ID, JSON_POINTER_EQUALS predicate, nonempty object path, and expected bounded JSON value;
• a DERIVATION or TRANSLATION certificate reference;
• sorted assumptions and a declarer coordinate.

The only registered interpretation is VSTD-CANONICAL-JSON-INTERPRETATION-0.1 with mechanism canonical-json-pointer-equality-v1, frame CANONICAL-JSON-OBJECT-0.1, language CANONICAL_JSON_OBJECT, and the inert profile retained as verifier/profiles/source-grounding-mechanism-0.1.json.

VSTD-SOURCE-GROUNDING-CERTIFICATE-0.1 retains the exact source, semantic frame, interpretation, proposition, producer, and checker coordinates plus the observed path/value and ESTABLISHED or REFUTED result. Its evidence_origin is MECHANISM_EXECUTION. That label is replayed, not trusted as historical proof of execution.

VSTD-SOURCE-GROUNDING-RECEIPT-0.1 retains all checked digests, checker coordinate, assumptions, exact check map, sorted reason codes, result, and residual obligations. The public JSON Schema is structural only; canonical-byte identity, profile support, facet equality, evidence binding, certificate replay, and receipt reproduction require the Python mechanism.

2. Qualification#

Qualification separately checks source and certificate binding, registered mechanism support, semantic-frame compatibility, certificate reproduction, and proposition evaluation. Source top-level keys must equal the declared facets. The certificate is rebuilt from the retained source and its carried producer coordinate and must match byte for byte.

Results are:

• ESTABLISHED: the selected path exists and its canonical value equals the declared expected value under the exact supported coordinate;
• REFUTED: the path is absent or its canonical value differs;
• UNKNOWN: required evidence is absent or the profile/frame is unsupported;
• INVALID: evidence, canonical encoding, binding, circularity, or replay is malformed or substituted.

Missing evidence remains UNKNOWN; malformed supplied evidence is INVALID. The mechanism rejects a declaration whose source, certificate, or declaration identity aliases another role. Recheck rebuilds the complete receipt from the exact declaration and current evidence and requires byte equality.

3. Bounds and claim boundary#

Records are at most 65,536 bytes, source objects at most 1,048,576 bytes, decoded JSON depth at most 16, decoded values at most 4,096, and sorted arrays at most 64 items. These are operational limits, not semantic completeness.

An ESTABLISHED result closes only one exact pointer-equality proposition over one exact source object. It does not establish producer independence, historical execution, denominator or real-world completeness, authority, source truth, runtime correspondence, or a numbered VSTD profile. These residual obligations remain explicit in every receipt.