Governance

Evidence can influence reasoning without becoming authority.

The core boundary in North Star is deliberately boring — in the best possible way. Memories, rankings, explanations, feedback and model agreement can inform a decision, but they do not silently authorize durable mutation or production action.

ObserveAllowed in bounded technical-preview contexts.
ProposeCandidate interpretations and review artifacts.
ChallengeContradiction and countermodel surfaces.
ReplayWitnessed deterministic reconstruction.
Self-promoteNot permitted.
Rewrite canonical memoryNot from recall/feedback alone.
Self-authorize actionNot permitted.
Self-seal a releaseNamed human authority remains required.
Authority boundary

Proposal, challenge, review, authorization.

North Star’s “Council” terminology refers to a governed review boundary. On a public technical surface, the important idea is role separation: machine proposals and challenges are evidence; named-human governance authorizes durable promotion, release and constitutional change.

Machine proposalCandidate only.
Independent challengeEvidence and contradiction.
Review packetFrozen, attributable record.
Named authorizationRequired for durable consequential transition.
Witness + Memory Diff

“Why did this change?” should have an inspectable answer.

Memory Diff compares snapshots and records the before/after hashes, changed fields, supporting witness references and boundary changes. The result is an explanation artifact — evidence of how state changed, not proof that the changed state is objectively true.

Snapshot Astable hash + state
Witnessed eventssource + provenance
Candidate deltawhat changed
Snapshot Bstable hash + state
Memory Diffreplayable explanation
Design invariant: authority fields default to false. Explanation receipts are audit evidence, not truth certificates. Candidate artifacts remain candidates until an explicitly governed path acts.