Documentation standards

Knowledge documentation must preserve the distance between a source, an evidence record, a claim, a review disposition, and a downstream decision. Collapsing those layers makes uncertainty disappear from prose even when it remains in storage.

Evidence vocabulary

Term	Required context	Must not imply
source	origin, version or retrieval date, license posture, and stable identifier	endorsement or current correctness
evidence	source lineage, extracted statement or observation, context, and normalization	proof independent of interpretation
claim	exact proposition, scope, linked support and contradiction, and revision	settled biological truth
support	edge rationale and applicable context	corroboration if several records derive from one source
contradiction	incompatible proposition or observation and its context	automatic falsification in every context
confidence	scale, policy, inputs, and update rule	calibrated probability unless calibration is shown
reviewed	reviewer or authority, fixed evidence revision, disposition, and rationale	permanently resolved or universally accepted
current	freshness rule and checked-at time	live synchronization with every external source

Reader evidence chain

flowchart LR
    Q["question or claim"] --> C["claim record"]
    C --> E["support and contradiction"]
    E --> S["sources and provenance"]
    E --> R["review disposition at revision"]
    R --> U["uncertainty and consumer boundary"]

Start a public claim with the exact proposition and context. Then expose both support and contradiction, source custody, freshness, and the review revision. End with what a consumer may conclude and what remains unresolved.

Citation and aggregation rules

Count independent evidence lineages, not repeated citations. Identify when a review, database, and benchmark ultimately derive from the same experiment. Preserve negative and null evidence. Explain identifier and species mapping before aggregating records across sources.

Quotes or summaries do not replace structured provenance. A reader must be able to reach the source identity and understand what transformation produced the stored evidence without assuming the repository republishes restricted content.

Decision boundary

Knowledge describes evidence state. Intelligence owns recommendation policy, Lab owns observed assay outcomes, and Core owns scientific computation. A Knowledge brief may inform those owners without becoming their approval or execution record.

Known limitations states the evidence ceiling, while definition of done defines custody after a change.