Release status· Documentation release docs-2026.07-r3, candidate. Specification sealed at v1.3 (succession-7). Checksums ship unsigned; the findings register is published and open, and the documentation package’s exact evidence references are still pending before it calls itself the public distribution. Independent formal and cryptographic review has not begun; results are Propositions and Claims until it does.
Text © 2026 Atlas North Institute LLC · CC BY-ND 4.0 · name and marks reserved · implementing the methodology requires no permission.
The only normative document in the corpus. Where any other GAD document and the specification differ, the specification governs. It extracts the algorithms underneath the practice so the status of AI-executed work is a computation: CONSTRUCT, the run loop a conforming implementation executes, and EVALUATE, the computations anyone can run on any machine. Six invariants hold it together, from contract precedence to claims that carry their own boundaries. Four statuses ascend in strength: VALID_RECORD, OUTCOME, CONTRACT_SATISFIED, DEFENSIBLE. Conformance is judged at three levels, bundle, constructor, and operational, and no passing record confers conformance on the tooling that produced it.
SHA-256: 9c31d03f9c29cbf1ab882eb966cfeec7b1a16e37f3f4d5a6907405c9ab975892
Do not edit the sealed file for any reason. Its digest is bound into the succession-7 record. Revisions arrive only by signed succession; succession 8 is proposed in a draft charter and remains unscheduled. Verify the download against the digest above before reading it as normative.
The specification governs its own evolution through a signed succession procedure defined inside it. Every amendment names its predecessor and successor by digest, carries seven mandatory items, and is signed under the committed operator authority key. The genesis is disclosed: the v0.6 origin was dev-signed and did not authorize its own amendment, no artifact claims it did, and the verifier checks that the disclosure has not been softened.
Seven records. Succession 4 ratified v1.0 (July 2026). Succession 5, v1.1, an amendment succession: Algorithm 1 made session-scoped, discharging REG-58. Succession 6, v1.2, a type-completeness amendment: the verification candidate set made derive-based and fail-closed, discharging REG-61. Succession 7, v1.3, a transition-completeness amendment: every commissioned node with no candidacy given an algorithmic route, candidacy derivation made constructor-published, both succession exits made labeled control flow, the draft label retired, discharging REG-64. Each record states its amendment class so the boundary cannot be inflated by citation, and each records that no conformance requirement was weakened.
The register is the specification's only open channel for findings. A ruling there is never an amendment; a frozen specification changes only by numbered, operator-signed succession. At the succession-7 seal the register held 64 findings and 6 rulings, and it remains open. No accepted finding has yet been shown to invalidate the published Trial 0 result. Any changed conformance conclusion will be disclosed through a signed succession, correction notice, or other identified governed record rather than by rewriting the historical result.
The schemas, canonical byte form, transition tables, conformance fixtures, evaluator, and Trial 0 record are maintained in GAD Protocol, a distinct codebase by design. See System Brief 04.
