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TQL Trust And Explanation Evidence Inventory v1

Purpose

This inventory records which evidence is available before TRUST <key> or WHY <key> enter the bounded TQL implementation. It is an admission record, not a promise that the command surface exists.

Evidence Matrix

Dimension Current source Scope TQL status Honest result today
Stored-page integrity tosumu_core::inspect::inspect_verification Database and page report Available to CHECK Passed, failed, or not checked; never truth
Key presence KvStore::get One requested key Available to DESCRIBE Found or missing, with byte count only
Key-specific integrity explanation No public citation surface One requested key Missing Unavailable; do not infer it from a database-wide result
Freshness No witness or observer anchor Record and database Missing Unanchored, not fresh or stale
Witnesses No peer/witness model Record and database Missing Unavailable
Provenance/history No stable semantic change history Record Missing Unavailable
Conflict state No canonical conflict metadata Record and scope Missing Unavailable
Recommended action No typed explanation policy Record and database Missing Do not render invented advice

Findings

  • Authentication and a successful verification report are integrity evidence; neither establishes truth, provenance, freshness, or witness coverage.
  • CHECK is intentionally database-scoped. Reusing its successful result as a per-key trust verdict would overstate what the current inspection API knows.
  • DESCRIBE can establish presence, not semantic meaning or historical origin.
  • unanchored is the correct future freshness state when a freshness question is asked without an external trusted anchor. It is not evidence that a record is stale, and it must not be reported by a command that has not requested freshness evidence.

Slice 4 Decision

TRUST <key> and WHY <key> remain deferred. Adding them now would create a shell-owned trust model with mostly unavailable fields and hardcoded advice. The next admissible implementation requires a public, provider-neutral evidence surface that can cite the source of each integrity, freshness, provenance, and witness finding.

Reopening Triggers

  • A public key-scoped verification or evidence API exists.
  • Semantic change history exposes stable provenance facts.
  • A witness or observer capability supplies a freshness anchor.
  • Conflict metadata has an owner and a bounded query surface.
  • A caller needs typed recommendations backed by those findings.