Glossary¶

Domain terms used throughout the SKI Framework specification and implementation. When a term has a regulatory meaning and an SKI-specific meaning, both are defined.

Agreement monitor¶

The rolling-window tracker (ski_model.v3.AgreementMonitor) that records every verdict's Verifier status and exposes an agreement_rate = AGREED / total plus a healthy / unhealthy signal. Replaces the v2 Determinism canary. Pages on a sustained drop below the configured threshold (default 0.95).

Audit ledger¶

The append-only Postgres table (ledger_entries) that records every verdict the runtime produces. Each row chains to its predecessor via a SHA-256 hash, and UPDATE / DELETE / TRUNCATE statements are rejected by database triggers (append_only.sql). v3 extends the row with the signed LLM transcript, model provenance hashes, KG citations, and the verifier status. A third party can re-verify the ledger using only the canonical serialization documented in tools/audit-ledger/src/audit_ledger/canonical.py.

CLEAR¶

One of the five verdicts. Applicable rules were evaluated and no compliance issue was detected. Normal operation; logged to the audit ledger like every other verdict.

Conformance level¶

A claim about how rigorously an implementation satisfies the specification. v3 defines three:

Provenance — every verdict envelope is complete, the Symbolic Verifier ran, citations exist, the agreement monitor is mounted, and the verdict taxonomy is exactly the five canonical values.
Durability — the KG is signed; the Risk-Tier Governor is strict; the audit ledger is append-only at the DB layer; the hash chain recomputes entry hashes (not just chain linkage); replay reproduces historical verdicts.
Sovereignty — operable air-gapped, tamper-evident, end-to-end signed. (Scaffolded; harness is the v3.1 milestone.)

See Conformance.

Coverage Register¶

A read-only Postgres view (coverage_register) exposing every NULL_UNMAPPED and NULL_STALE verdict. KG editors use it to identify gaps in the obligation set and freshness expectations.

Determinism canary¶

The v2 mechanism — a fixed input + expected verdict pair that the service re-evaluated on a schedule. Retired in v3 in favour of the Agreement monitor, which measures the live LLM↔verifier agreement rate continuously instead of replaying a synthetic baseline.

DISCRETIONARY¶

One of the five verdicts. The rule applies but evaluating it requires qualified human judgment; route to a compliance expert.

Ed25519¶

The signature scheme used to sign Knowledge Graphs and LLM transcripts. Chosen for short keys (32 bytes), short signatures (64 bytes), and constant-time verification. The runtime refuses to load an unsigned KG — there is no escape hatch.

Extraction quality¶

The extractor's authoring-time trust signal on a [ComplianceRule] (EXPLICIT / DISCRETIONARY / CONFLICTING). It is not a runtime confidence score (Axiom 2 prohibits those in the audit trail). v3 renamed it from the v2 confidence to avoid confusion with the runtime's prohibited confidence_level.

FLAG¶

One of the five verdicts. A compliance rule has been breached. The sidecar emits an alert; a designated human reviewer is escalated.

Formalizable assertion¶

A structured claim the LLM produces alongside its verdict (e.g. { "obligation_id": "x", "metric": "so2_ppm", "operator": "must_not_exceed", "observed": 87, "expected": 100, "satisfied": true }). The Symbolic Verifier cross-checks each formalizable assertion mechanically and records AGREED / contradiction / divergence / unverifiable.

Jurisdictional scope¶

The v3 KG's mechanism for routing only the obligations applicable to a tenant's jurisdiction (and effective at the measurement's timestamp) into the LLM prompt. Implemented by KnowledgeGraph.scope_to(jurisdiction, as_of); the scope block (jurisdiction, as_of, n_in, n_out) travels in the signed LLM transcript so an auditor can confirm what was sent.

Knowledge Graph (KG)¶

The compiled, signed artifact that drives the runtime. In v3 it is a typed graph of nodes (Subject, Rule, Obligation, Definition, Exemption, Precedent, Jurisdiction, Citation) and edges (applies_to, consists_of, defined_by, exempted_by, amended_by, interpreted_by, scoped_to, cited_by). Produced by the kg-extractor + kg-validator Phase 1 pipeline. Loaded once per version and never modified at runtime.

LLM transcript¶

The verbatim prompt + LLM response, plus the prompt template hash, decoder seed, structured-grammar hash, and the model-weight hash for the backend that produced it. Signed (ed25519) by the runtime and recorded alongside the ledger entry. Reconstructable by an auditor — the v3 verifiable provenance contract.

NULL_STALE¶

One of the five verdicts. A rule matched, but its requires_recent_within_seconds freshness gate found no telemetry sample in the buffer for that subject within the window.

NULL_UNMAPPED¶

One of the five verdicts. The telemetry's subject is not present in the KG. Document in the Coverage Register; expand the KG.

Pillar¶

One of the four non-negotiable design constraints SKI is built on: Determinism (of provenance, not of bits in v3), Sovereignty, Auditability, Human Primacy.

Predicate¶

The structured operand inside an Obligation that the Symbolic Verifier interprets. v3 stateless operators: must_not_exceed, must_be_at_least, must_be_within, must_equal, must_not_equal, plus must_be_one_of, must_not_be_one_of, must_be_recorded_within. v3 stateful operators (against the Telemetry buffer): window_count, window_sum, window_avg.

Replay¶

Re-evaluating a range of ledger entries against the recorded KG and telemetry buffer, then comparing the produced verdict to the originally-recorded verdict. The deterministic-replay primitive (audit-ledger replay) underpins the Durability conformance level.

See Replay.

Risk-Tier Governor¶

The authoritative source of risk tier per obligation (spec v3.0 §5.4). Reads each KG rule's optional risk_tier field and returns the strictest tier across the obligations applicable to a measurement. Strict by design — the caller cannot self-declare a tier. The strictest tier across applicable rules wins; default is tier-2.

Sidecar¶

The passive, read-only telemetry intake service. Reads from file / HTTP / Kafka, normalises records, and forwards them to the SKI Model. The sidecar does not perform tag inference — that routing decision belongs to the runtime.

SKI Model¶

The runtime service that hosts the v3 Evaluator. Wraps the local LLM backend (Ollama by default; pluggable via the V3LLMBackend protocol), runs structured generation against the scoped KG snapshot, hands the result to the Symbolic Verifier, applies the risk-tier policy, signs the transcript, and writes the envelope to the ledger.

Sovereignty¶

The constraint that operational data must never leave the organisation's infrastructure boundary. SKI satisfies it by running inference on a local LLM (Ollama, vLLM, or llama.cpp) inside the same Docker network as the audit ledger. The Sovereignty conformance level (v3) makes the constraint testable.

Subject¶

The dotted-path string that identifies what a telemetry record is about, e.g. facility.so2.discharge_ppm. v3 obligations are scoped to a subject via the applies_to edge. Producers MUST NOT include a rule_id in telemetry records.

Symbolic Verifier¶

The v3 mechanical cross-check on the LLM's formalizable assertions. For each assertion, the verifier evaluates the underlying predicate against the same telemetry and emits one of four statuses: AGREED, LLM_CONTRADICTION (LLM was wrong about the verifiable claim), NEURO_SYMBOLIC_DIVERGENCE (LLM verdict ≠ verifier verdict for a non-trivial reason), UNVERIFIABLE (the assertion's predicate is not formalizable or telemetry is missing).

Tag Registry¶

The compile-time, governed subject → rule mapping carried in the KG. The v3 package retains the v2 invariant (no runtime fuzzy matching, no LLM disambiguation, no embedding lookup) and additionally houses the Risk-Tier Governor.

Telemetry buffer¶

The Postgres-backed, append-only, RANGE-partitioned-by-telemetry_ts table that stores recent telemetry for stateful predicate evaluation. Retention is configured per tenant (no default). Introduced in v0.2.0 (RFC 0001).

Verdict¶

The structured output of evaluating a measurement against the KG. Exactly five values: CLEAR, FLAG, NULL_UNMAPPED, NULL_STALE, DISCRETIONARY. No scores, no probabilities, no confidence levels — that's a deliberate constraint (Axiom 2).

Verdict envelope¶

The v3 audit-grade contract around the verdict. Carries: verdict, reasoning, kg_citations, formalizable_assertions, verifier_result, model_provenance, transcript_ref. Validates under extra="forbid" — unknown fields are a contract violation.

Verifier status¶

One of four spec-normative outcomes the Symbolic Verifier emits per evaluation: AGREED, LLM_CONTRADICTION, NEURO_SYMBOLIC_DIVERGENCE, UNVERIFIABLE. Recorded in the ledger; fed to the Agreement monitor in aggregate.