Invariants

Knowledge invariants preserve the difference between source material, normalized evidence, claims, relationships, review state, and downstream decisions. That separation keeps disagreement and uncertainty inspectable.

Evidence-custody invariants

Invariant	What remains true	Observable violation
source identity is immutable	origin, version or retrieval date, license posture, and source identifier survive normalization	a citation cannot be traced to the retrieved record
evidence preserves context	extraction, species, sample, method, condition, and transformation remain attached where relevant	statement is reused outside the context that supported it
claims are exact propositions	scope and revision are stable and distinct from display summaries	editing prose silently changes claim identity
graph edges are explicit	support, contradiction, derivation, and context relationships name valid endpoints and rationale	claim remains after its evidence edge disappears
contradiction is durable	conflicting records and context survive reconciliation	later evidence overwrites adverse evidence
confidence is policy-bound	scale, inputs, update rule, and revision remain reviewable	stored confidence changes with no decision record
lineage governs corroboration	duplicates and shared upstream sources do not masquerade as independent support	repeated database copies inflate evidence strength
review is revision-specific	reviewer, evidence revision, disposition, rationale, and unresolved items remain attached	later review rewrites the earlier conclusion
serialization preserves meaning	graph, claims, evidence, provenance, and review state round-trip together	stored state loses uncertainty or relationship type
downstream use is non-mutating	Intelligence and Lab reference Knowledge state and append outcomes	a recommendation edits the evidence record that justified it

flowchart LR
    S["source"] --> E["evidence and provenance"]
    E --> C["claim"]
    E --> G["support and contradiction graph"]
    C --> G
    G --> R["review at fixed revision"]
    R --> D["downstream reference"]

Context is part of meaning

Species, isoform, condition, cohort, method, time, and source lineage can turn apparent agreement into non-comparable evidence. Normalization may make records joinable; it must not erase the context needed to decide whether they should be joined.

Failure response

Reject invalid edges and orphan records. Preserve unresolved contradiction and ambiguous mappings. Create a new claim or review revision when meaning changes. Do not repair graph integrity by dropping adverse evidence or assigning a convenient identifier.