Overview — Canonical definitions
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6. Canonical definitions
These definitions apply across all sections of this specification. Where a term appears in a section without a local definition, the definition below governs.
Order. An independently-generated, first-class, co-equal authority functional dimension of a domain — the kind of thing being expressed. Non-limiting order types: descriptive (what exists), prescriptive (what is required or constrained), procedural (how things proceed), causal (what produces what), relational (how things relate), normative (what ought to be), temporal (how things change). The set of order types is open; the architecture does not fix or limit it. “Independently-generated” means a distinct synthesis procedure per order — not post-hoc labeling of a single unified output. Co-equal authority means no order is subordinate to any other in the governance act.
Stakeholder perspective. A generative dimension of the formal domain model. A stakeholder is any entity — a person, role, institution, jurisdiction, regulation, policy, system, physical entity, or physical environment (i.e., “person, place, or thing”) — whose perspective produces a distinct relational structure in the model: a distinct set of relationships between tasks, parties, procedures, and considerations. Perspective is not an interpretive overlay applied after the model is built; the model’s relational structure results from analysis performed through each stakeholder’s lens. A HIPAA regulation, a coalition rules-of-engagement document, and a physical operating environment are each stakeholders.
Variant. A semantically equivalent but expressionally distinct rendering of a model element, produced deliberately using NLP/LLM generation to expose the gap between semantic equivalence and representational similarity. Two variants of the same element mean the same thing; they are generated to not look like the same thing. The variant consistency map (01-juno §5.1) records known-equivalent variant entities and serves as the calibration artifact for relational quantification mechanisms: a mechanism evaluated against variant entities reveals precisely where it conflates surface-form divergence with semantic difference. Downstream tasks reference the map as a referenceable authority on equivalence — they do not re-derive it. Variant is a first-class structural property of the model, produced during model construction, not post-hoc. A lossy variant must be declared with an explicit information-loss record.
Higher-order synthesis. An intentional analytical act that operates over a declared selection of inputs — drawn from any combination of order outputs, perspective outputs, variant outputs, and prior higher-order outputs — to derive nontrivial relationships and findings. The input selection is unconstrained: a higher-order synthesis may draw from a single order alone, a single perspective alone, a cross-dimension combination, or exclusively from prior higher-order outputs. No minimum or maximum input set is imposed. The depth is unbounded: any higher-order output may itself serve as input to a further higher-order synthesis act. Outputs are not limited to causal relationships; non-limiting output types include correlations, emergent patterns, cross-perspective conflicts, variant-consistency failures, cross-order contradictions, derived classifications, and synthesized policies. The declared input selection and synthesis intent are recorded in a composition provenance record that serves as the recomputation anchor: an independent inspector can re-derive the finding from the declared inputs and the provenance record without access to the deployment. Higher-order synthesis is fully defined in 01-juno §11.
Governing specification. A registered, version-stamped, formally-evaluable artifact declaring the permitted intents, prohibited acts, and in-scope / out-of-scope classification for a governed invocation class. Formally evaluable means that the order-typed lift of any input can be evaluated against the specification to produce a mechanical verdict. A natural-language policy is not a governing specification.
Order-typed representation. A representation of content — a prompt, a finding, a verdict, or a primitive — that carries an explicit order-type tag identifying which order(s) of the governing model structure the content. The tag is not a label; it is a structured identifier encoding the order class, the aspect position in the order-decomposition tree (whose coordinate format is formally defined in 01-juno), and the domain-model version.
Recomputation witness. A record sufficient for an inspector to independently re-derive a result from source under the governing orders, without access to the deployment or trust in the system. Two components are required: (i) the recorded inputs and the governing orders / specification version, and (ii) for deterministic computations, a determinism declaration; for non-deterministic but re-derivable computations, a declared re-derivation procedure reference and all parameters sufficient for independent re-execution. A cryptographic hash chain or audit log is tamper-evidence, not a recomputation witness. Tamper-evidence and re-derivability are independent properties; the pre-invocation witness retention discipline (AIGP) (02e §10.4) requires both.
Conformance certificate. An artifact defined by the co-presence of nine structural invariants (fully defined in 02b-cert-attestation §2; structurally enforced in 03-iii §3). The inventive matter is the invariant set, not a field count: a certificate carrying all nine invariants is conforming regardless of additional fields; a certificate omitting any invariant is structurally deficient regardless of field count. The canonical realization assigns one invariant per field: target identity (Field 1), governing-specification identity with bootstrap provenance (Field 2), certification-path record (Field 3), grounded verdict (Field 4), declared scope (Field 5), falsifier record (Field 6), order-typed recomputation witness (Field 7), temporal validity window (Field 8), and tamper-evident cryptographic binding over all invariant fields (Field 9). Field 4 must be a grounded verdict derived through bounded exploration — not an asserted verdict. Field 7 must be an order-typed recomputation witness satisfying the structural requirements of 03-iii §3.4.
Domain aspect. An order-decomposition product whose identity and membership boundaries are defined by the order-decomposition operation of 01-juno — not by taxonomic classification. An aspect’s membership criteria are procedurally derived from the order structure. An annotated ontology class is not a domain aspect: an ontology class’s membership criteria are defined by necessary-and-sufficient taxonomic conditions, which is a different derivation path. Domain aspects are structural primitives of the multi-order dimension; they are distinct from perspective-constituted relational elements and from variant-typed expressions of the same content.
Delta-attestation lifecycle. A versioning and change-classification mechanism governing amendments to all registered artifact classes (specifications, models, data sources, and knowledge bases). Changes are classified as scope-preserving, scope-extending, scope-restricting, or scope-breaking. A scope-breaking amendment immediately invalidates downstream predicates that depended on prior-version scope. Fully defined in 02b-i.
Named authority. An entity whose standing to govern invocations of a declared class is formally declared via a named-authority standing record carrying at minimum four required fields: verified identity, authorized actuation classes, scope-of-applicability, and public key. A named authority is not a licensee, an operator, a model, or a policy. It is a registered governance actor.
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