Decision Provenance Standard
Open standard · v1.0 (rev. 8) · CC-BY 4.0

Decision Provenance Standard

Audit-ready provenance for decisions made by humans and AI together — a record you can find in thirty seconds and trust, with a human signature on every consequential decision.

⚠ Read this first — what the Standard is not
  • The records are input, not evidence.
  • It informs regulatory frameworks without satisfying them.
  • Conformance is self-declared; no body certifies it.
  • It is not legal advice and not a regulatory substitute.

The one idea

As AI authors more of the work, “how was this decided, and who is accountable?” gets harder to answer. The Standard turns that question into a structured record — through four fixed building blocks that compose into audit-ready decision provenance.

01

The Charter

For a recurring decision class, it names what it governs, who owns it, the mode it runs in, where its records live, and what reopens it.

02

Two Modes

Mode 1 (human-authored, AI-checking) and Mode 2 (AI-authored, human-reviewing). Every record declares its mode; AI-authored content carries an Article 50 disclosure.

03

Human signature & seal

A record becomes affirmed only when a named human signs — then it is sealed and tamper-evident. There is no passive promotion.

04

Conformance levels

Three cumulative, self-declared levels: Charter-Conformant, Mode-Disambiguated, Continuously Auditable. No third party certifies them.

Read the Standard

The normative core plus four companions and the governance appendix. Each is a self-contained reading page with its own table of contents.

Learn

Plain-language ways in — before, or instead of, the normative text.

Compliance & frameworks

The Standard is the decision-provenance record that feeds your compliance work. It never replaces it.

Adopt

For implementers and the engineers who maintain the records.

Downloads

The same six documents as editable Word files and as PDFs (figures embedded). A complete release bundle (Markdown sources, Word, and PDF) is below; the JSON schemas and reference implementation follow with the substrate publication.

Core
Companion A
Companion B
Companion C
Companion D
Appendix G

Download the full release bundle (.zip) — Markdown sources, Word, and PDF, with a manifest and SHA-256 checksums.

About

Who it serves:

The executive who owns decisions Accountability that survives the audit.
The implementer A concrete record format to build against.
The regulator / auditor Structured input to your own judgment.
The researcher An open, citable instrument.
The curious reader A plain-language way in.