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Agent OS
AOS-META-003 Normative foundation

Source and Claim Citation Convention

Source and Claim Citation Convention: scope, decisions, requirements, evidence, risks, and traceability for the Agent OS programme.

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Source and Claim Citation Convention

This document defines the machine-readable conventions that keep specifications, tasks, sources, claims, experiments, and Wiki output consistent.

Table of Contents

Purpose and Scope

Area: Documentation System.

This document defines the machine-readable conventions that keep specifications, tasks, sources, claims, experiments, and Wiki output consistent.

This document owns the semantics implied by Source and Claim Citation Convention. It does not assert that every described subsystem already exists. It defines the target model, constraints, evidence needed to trust an implementation, and the boundary with adjacent documents.

Normative Position

  1. Define the boundary, owner, inputs, outputs, failure modes, observability, security authority, lifecycle, and compatibility policy.
  2. Keep implementation facts separate from desired outcomes and unverified assumptions.
  3. Require a reproducible evidence bundle before downstream components depend on the result.

Operating Model

The operating model is contract-first and evidence-driven. A component declares its authority, resources, lifecycle, error model, cancellation and timeout behavior, observability, version, and compatibility promise. Backends are replaceable only when the same conformance suite passes and no forbidden platform type leaks into portable layers.

Implementation proceeds through a reference model or mock, deterministic QEMU evidence where relevant, documentation-first physical hardware, and quality-hardware evidence. Pixel 9 adapters remain quarantined according to ADR-0004.

Requirements

  • R01. Define the boundary, owner, inputs, outputs, failure modes, observability, security authority, lifecycle, and compatibility policy.
  • R02. Keep implementation facts separate from desired outcomes and unverified assumptions.
  • R03. Require a reproducible evidence bundle before downstream components depend on the result.
  • R04. Specify normal, partial, denied, timeout, cancellation, restart, upgrade, and permanent-failure behavior.
  • R05. Expose structured diagnostics without leaking secrets or vendor-specific implementation details.
  • R06. Link material unknowns to a claim and, when testable, an experiment with an owner and gate.
  • R07. Update affected documentation and task data when evidence changes the model.

Failure and Degradation

Degradation must be explicit rather than accidental. The system reports capability absence, reduced quality, unavailable provider, stale data, or unsafe condition through typed states. It must not silently fall back to broader authority, unrestricted legacy execution, unverified firmware, lossy data migration, or irreversible agent action.

Recovery defines what state is retained, reconstructed, re-enrolled, compensated, or intentionally discarded. Unsupported hardware or providers are rejected at binding time where possible.

Evidence and Acceptance

  • Reviewed specification.
  • Linked tasks, claims, sources and experiments.
  • Conformance or acceptance evidence.
  • Evidence records target identity, hardware revision, firmware, source commit, toolchain, configuration, seed, timestamps, artifacts, expected result, actual result, and reviewer.
  • Acceptance requires the referenced tasks to meet their own criteria; prose completion is not implementation completion.

Implementation Obligations

Task Obligation Priority Gate/Milestone Verification
AOS-DOCS-003 Normalize source archive into normative specifications P0 M0 architecture and product reviewers sample every source family
AOS-DOCS-004 Establish source and literature register P0 M0 URL/schema validation and authority/source-scope review
AOS-DOCS-005 Establish claim verification register P0 M0 review all hardware, camera, cellular, backup, agent, and portability claims
AOS-LEGAL-004 Implement source and artifact provenance controls P0 M0 scan seeded fixtures and sample imported dependencies/assets

Risks and Open Questions

  • Undefined ownership and failure semantics create hidden coupling.
  • Unverified source claims can become architecture accidentally.
  • Open-question rule: an unanswered high-impact question becomes a claim/experiment record and cannot be hidden in meeting notes.
  • Stop rule: work stops or changes track when legal rights, recovery, debug access, safety, or the required evidence path is unavailable.

Related Documents

Planning Reference Anchors

Claim Discipline

AOS-DOCS-003 — Normalize source archive into normative specifications; AOS-DOCS-005 — Establish claim verification register

Source Record

AOS-DOCS-004 — Establish source and literature register; AOS-LEGAL-004 — Implement source and artifact provenance controls

Generated Cross-Reference Anchors

Citation Rules

This stable anchor is referenced by another canonical document. Its normative content is the nearest applicable section above and the linked task/claim data; future editorial refinement must preserve the anchor.