Reasoning and accountability
Decision Traces
- Question answered
- How does the inspected evidence justify this decision without collapsing observation, interpretation, claim, and action into one statement?
- Evidence required
- Recorded observation, inspectable source artifacts, relevant constraints, and the rule used to distinguish PASS, REVIEW, or FAIL.
- Produces
- A trace from observation → evidence → interpretation → decision → action → verification, including unresolved limitations.
- Use when
- A diagnostic finding or investigation will cause a recommendation, implementation choice, suppression, inclusion, or public claim.
- Used in
- Search System Diagnostic, Search Intelligence, Search Architecture, and AI Discovery Systems.
- Responsible author
- Joel David Maldonado