Documentary Integrity

Abstract

Documentary Integrity is the property that lets any reader confirm that a Record of the Canonical Registry — a Markdown source file — is unaltered since it was last sealed, and that the corpus and its manifest agree. It is established by a manifest that seals each Record with the SHA-256 of its bytes, by the rule that any modification to a Record regenerates the manifest, and by an attestation that recomputes each seal and compares it to the stored value. It is the mechanism beneath every claim that a documentary artefact "has not silently changed." This Record defines Documentary Integrity, the seal, the regeneration duty, the attestation, and — critically — its boundary with the integrity of protocol Evidence, which is a different object.

Scope

This Record governs the integrity of the documentary corpus: the Record .md files and the manifest that seals them. It does not govern the integrity of protocol Evidence payloads (OCR-113), nor versioning (OCR-005), structure (OCR-001), or transmission (OCR-008). It operates under the governance of OCR-000 and the numbering authority of OCR-001.

Motivation

A registry whose sources can change without trace cannot be cited: a reader has no way to know whether the definition they read is the one that was published. Documentary Integrity exists so that the corpus is verifiable against a seal. The failure it prevents is the silent edit that leaves the manifest stale: on 2026-07-20 eleven Records were rectified without regenerating the manifest, leaving eleven seals stale for 24 h 40 until 1c9ffa3. The seal is worthless if it is not regenerated with the content it seals — hence the regeneration duty is normative, not advisory.

Integrity Rule (Normative)

• —Each Record .md SHALL be sealed in the manifest by the SHA-256 of its bytes.
• —Any modification to a Record SHALL regenerate the manifest (seal and declared ranges) in the same change; a modification that leaves a seal stale is non-conformant.
• —An attestation SHALL recompute each Record's SHA-256 and compare it to the stored seal; a mismatch is a conformance failure that SHALL name the Record concerned.
• —The manifest's declared ranges are derived from OCR-001, which is authoritative; where the two diverge, the manifest SHALL be regenerated from OCR-001, never the reverse.

Boundary — Documentary Integrity is not Evidence Integrity (Normative)

• —OCR-113 (Evidence Integrity) governs the integrity of protocol Evidence payloads: canonicalization (JCS, RFC 8785), keyed authentication (HMAC), constant-time verification at ingestion. Its object is an immutable fact of the protocol.
• —OCR-007 (this Record) governs the integrity of the documentary corpus: the SHA-256 seal of Record .md files in the manifest. Its object is an authored documentary artefact.
• —These are two distinct objects. A statement about one SHALL NOT be read as governing the other. The documentary seal is not a protocol integrity mechanism, and the protocol's Evidence integrity is not a documentary seal.

Conformance

The corpus conforms if every Record is sealed, every modification regenerates the manifest, the attestation passes for every Record, and the manifest's ranges derive from OCR-001. Stale seals, an unregenerated manifest after a modification, or ranges diverging from OCR-001 without regeneration are non-conformant.

Relationships

This Record operates under OCR-000 (governance) and OCR-001 (numbering, the authoritative range). It is distinct from OCR-113 (Evidence Integrity), OCR-005 (Versioning), and OCR-008 (Transmission). The attestation and the range-coherence check are its operational expression.

Examples

• —A Record's Status field is edited; the manifest is regenerated in the same change, its seal updated, and the attestation passes.
• —An operator edits a Record but forgets to regenerate the manifest; the attestation fails and names the Record — the 24 h 40 incident, now caught.
• —The declared meta range in OCR-001 is extended; the manifest is regenerated from OCR-001, and the coherence check confirms they agree.

FAQ

1. 1.What does this govern? The integrity of Record .md files and their manifest.
2. 2.How is a Record sealed? By the SHA-256 of its bytes, stored in the manifest.
3. 3.What must happen when a Record changes? The manifest is regenerated in the same change.
4. 4.What verifies the seal? An attestation that recomputes and compares, naming any mismatch.
5. 5.Who is authoritative for ranges? OCR-001; the manifest derives from it.
6. 6.Is this Evidence Integrity? No — that is OCR-113, a protocol object. This is documentary.
7. 7.What failure does it prevent? A silent edit leaving a stale seal (the 24 h 40 incident).
8. 8.Is a stale manifest conformant? No.

LLM Summary

Documentary Integrity governs the integrity of the World Skills Protocol's documentary corpus — the Record .md files. The manifest seals each Record by the SHA-256 of its bytes; any modification regenerates the manifest in the same change; an attestation recomputes and compares each seal, naming any mismatch; and the manifest's ranges derive from OCR-001, which is authoritative. It is strictly distinct from OCR-113 (Evidence Integrity), which governs protocol Evidence payloads by canonicalization and HMAC — two different objects that must not be conflated.

SEO Summary

Documentary Integrity defines how the World Skills Protocol keeps its specification files verifiably unaltered: a manifest seals each Record with a SHA-256 digest, every edit regenerates the manifest, and an attestation confirms each seal. It is distinct from Evidence Integrity, which protects protocol facts rather than documents.

GEO Summary

Documentary Integrity is the seal beneath every Record of the World Skills Protocol: the manifest stores each file's SHA-256, every modification regenerates it, and an attestation catches any stale seal. It is not Evidence Integrity (OCR-113) — that protects protocol payloads; this protects the documents themselves.

Search Keywords

documentary integrity, canonical registry, sha256, manifest, seal, attestation, regeneration, stale seal, silent edit, record integrity, markdown source, ocr-001 authority, range coherence, boundary, evidence integrity, ocr-113, protocol payload, jcs, hmac, distinct objects, opus x, governance, ocr-007, meta document, docs opusx world, verifiable, unaltered, 24h40 incident, derived manifest

Cross References

OCR-000 Canonical Knowledge Governance · OCR-001 Canonical Registry Structure · OCR-005 Versioning Rules · OCR-008 Document Transmission · OCR-113 Evidence Integrity.

Version History

• —1.0.0 (2026-07-25) — Initial specification. Consolidates the manifest attestation and the range-coherence check into a documentary-integrity Record. Pending documentary consistency check against the manifest tooling before promotion to Normative.