How the conscience graph works

Who may change what

Learning is asymmetric. An attested harm event raises the relevant L3 edge weights immediately, in proportion to severity. A trust event lowers a weight by a small step, and only after five consecutive clean reported outcomes in the same action class. Plasticity falls under load. Stuck edges are repaired by re-attribution: an accountable principal rescopes the evidence, the harm record stays intact, and every precedent that cited it is invalidated.

Consult, commit, report

Three calls, plus a resolver chain. The consult carries the requester (agent, certificate, session, principal chain) and the proposition: kind, a first-person statement, intent, action class, typed parameters, reversibility, blast radius, origin (principal, peer or self), impact region and optional domain. Modes: check one option, score several, or choose the cheapest.

consult:
  requester: {agent_id, certificate: au.finance.verified.00a9c2, session_id, principal_chain}
  proposition:
    kind: action
    statement: "I transfer 14,800 AUD to the ryokan's account."
    intent: "Pay the deposit the customer asked for."
    action_class: transfer_international
    parameters: {amount: 14800, currency: AUD, recipient: ...}
    reversibility: irreversible   blast_radius: third_party
    origin: principal   impact_region: au   domain: finance
  mode: check

# response
verdict: proceed_with_conditions   band: stress   cost: 0.53   confidence: 0.91
values_touched: [{fin.report.ivts, L2, w 0.5, p 0.95, lineage_ref}, {fin.scam.prevent, L2, w 0.7, p 0.10, lineage_ref}]
conditions: [IVTS report lodged, recipient matched, recorded as liability]
path_trace: ["fin.report.ivts -> transfer_international (0.5 x 0.95)", ...]
resolver_path: [own, specialist]   cache: miss   engine_grade: assessor
receipt: {id, proposition_hash, action_class, parameters_hash, expires_at, signature}
signature: ...

Receipts are real (v0.9). A proceed verdict carries a signed receipt (HMAC-SHA256 under a deployment secret) bound to the parameters hash of the exact tool call, with a ten-minute expiry and a single-use id. A verify endpoint checks signature, expiry and parameters. A call whose arguments differ from the consulted ones is refused with both hashes. An MCP gateway sits between any client and any server: every tool call is consulted first; prune, escalate and unknown are refused with the values that stopped them; proceed is forwarded only with a receipt that verifies.

Report closes the loop: clean, harm or unknown against the receipt, with attestation. Clean counts toward a trust event. Harm fires on every edge in the path trace and invalidates the precedent. An agent that does not report does not earn trust.

Resolver chain: own graph, then a specialist graph service holding an accredited certificate for the impact region and domain, then a human graph service behind the same interface. Each responder signs; each forwarder countersigns. Unknown from the last resolver halts the loop. There is no default to proceed.

Twenty-six graphs in three tiers

Three conventions hold across the profiles. Where a source says must, or creates an offence, the value is sharp and the edge weight 0.9 to 1.0. Where it says should or take reasonable steps, the value is soft and the weight 0.3 to 0.8. Obligations the agent must perform are edges of weight 0.1 attached to the verdict as conditions. Each profile names its known conflicts as edges and seeds case-law precedents. A loader validates every cross-graph reference, computes the manifest hash and runs the cost formula against a shared fixture file.

Verification pass (v0.8). Every source and clause in all twenty-six graphs was checked against the page of the body that issued it. Eighty-nine values were corrected, superseded instruments replaced, and the graphs grew to over a thousand values and nearly six hundred sources, with one overlay file per graph recording each check. Where a legislation site blocked reading, the clause is marked for a person to open before the graph is signed.

Current paper and archive

Archived versions are retained in the project repository for lineage and are available on request. The schema remains at v0.4 (Appendix A of the paper). The global floor is at v0.5.