Guide 6: Audits, strikes and decision items
| The Principia Machina: map |
|---|
| Reading the diagrams Structure key Process key Definition of terms Roles |
| Reading by audience Start here: the walk through The operator's guide Tutorial: create a UUID Workspace Container (UWC) Public Recorder inputs Sponsors: your first agent |
| The specification Contents: parts, tables, diagrams TPS 0.5.0 (declared 2026-10-03, revision 8; machine-optimized text) Decisions (the foundations record, one line each) |
The operator's guide. It assumes the walk; a newcomer should read that first. Each page opens with its diagram, states its purpose and scope, gives the procedure, names what it does not cover, works one example, and links the sections of the specification that govern it. Where this guide and the specification differ, the specification governs.
The path a record takes through SR1 to SR9 when a contradiction appears. (diagram page.)
Purpose
Know what the audit does on its own, what it puts to a person, and what the operator records.
Scope
When the audit runs, what it strikes without asking, when it opens an audit block, how a decision item is put and recorded. Not covered: the physics of any contradiction.
Procedure
- The audit runs at certification and at every later run. It checks every record against the register and the master record and applies the strike rule.
- It strikes without asking in two cases: a record contradicting the kernel, and the more distant of two contradicting records when their distances differ. Each strike is a withdrawal record, forward-only, naming what it struck and what stands.
- It opens an audit block, and never decides one, in three cases: equal distance, the count of independent contradictions reaching the container's threshold, and a reproduction that disagrees with a landed result.
- Every audit block closes as a decision item put to the human: the colliding authorities, the slots, the blast radius, labeled options in preference order. The human selects; the selection is recorded with the block.
- Measured records are scaled before any contradiction test when their scatter exceeds their stated uncertainties; a contradiction that does not survive the scaling is not one. A measured record never strikes a logical derivation; the disagreement becomes a named gap.
Checklist
- Every strike has a withdrawal record; nothing is deleted.
- Every audit block has a recorded decision item and selection.
- Where an open decision item is written on the wiki is not yet fixed by the specification (docket C-30); record it on the control panel until it is.
Non-goals
Ranking physics results is the container's Measure Set's job, not the operator's (TPS 4.3).
Worked example
Two standing records give different values for the same quantity. Both are measured. The audit scales their uncertainties by the scatter, finds the difference still exceeds the container's multiplier, and compares distances: one needed two extra assumptions, the other four. The four-assumption record is struck; its two extra assumptions are recorded as the locus. No person was asked; both records remain readable.
Governing sections: TPS 4.1, TPS 4.4, TPS 4.6, TPS 6.3.
Previous: Landing and post-refusal. Next: Certifying agents.