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Operating principles

Principles

wetink is built around a small set of constraints on accountable machine-assisted work. Implementations may change. These constraints should not.

For current implementation state → Architecture

Constraint register

wetink composition: constraint register

  • 01RECORD

    The record must outlast the worker.

    A judgment cannot depend on remembering which model, interface, employee, vendor, or prompt happened to exist when the action occurred. The surviving record must preserve enough state to understand and reconstruct the judgment later.

    Absorbs the prior ideas of explainability, historical reproducibility, and survival across changes in models, vendors, and interfaces.

  • 02SOURCE

    Evidence must remain attributable to source.

    A conclusion may be machine-assisted. Its evidentiary basis must still resolve to the underlying source material from which the relevant fact was established.

    Transformation does not create authority.

    A model may extract, classify, compare, or derive. Its output does not become source evidence merely because a model produced it.

  • 03ROLES

    Different kinds of truth stay different.

    Source, observation, authority, conclusion, and approval are distinct semantic roles and must remain distinct. No presentation collapses one category into another for convenience.

    Source supports
    Observation derives
    Authority governs
    Conclusion decides
    Approval authorizes
  • 04AUTHORITY

    Authority must be explicit and versioned.

    A later reviewer should be able to identify which rule governed, which version applied, who or what possessed authority to resolve the judgment, and when that authority applied.

    Versioning is not merely document history. It is the ability to identify the authority that actually governed a historical action.

  • 05SEPARATION

    Required separation must be enforceable.

    Where policy requires separation of duties, distinct approval, human resolution, or another control boundary, the system must be capable of making that boundary enforceable rather than advisory.

    The principle is conditional on the governing policy or control requirement, not a universal claim that human approval applies everywhere.

    "Maker/checker" is banking's term for human dual control. This principle states the constraint that required separation must be enforceable as a durable property, not a status report. What the system enforces toward binding the checker to a verified human identity is stated on Architecture, not here.

  • 06UNCERTAINTY

    Uncertainty must survive.

    Ambiguity, conflicting evidence, missing authority, unresolved exceptions, and refused states cannot quietly disappear merely because the system needs an answer.

    A system that cannot represent "not resolved" will eventually manufacture certainty.

The implementation can change. The burden of proof cannot.

Inspect the implementation

Principles are only useful if the system can enforce them.

Inspect the architecture →Walk one decision →