The language of AI provenance
TEN CANONICAL TERMS · MAINTAINED BY TRUSTTHREAD
There was no working vocabulary for how AI outputs are grounded, so we built one. Each term below has a canonical definition page — a precise meaning, a visual specimen, and a live example in a real public Thread. The library grows as the product does.
Groundline
The deepest confirmed node in a provenance chain — how far the evidence actually reaches before it stops being verified.
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Fade Point
The exact node where a chain of solid evidence quietly turns into assumption.
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Provenance Debt
The accumulated mass of ungrounded claims an agent builds up over time. Same shape as technical debt.
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Shadow Assumption
A hidden assumption buried inside a claim that looks confirmed but isn't.
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Human Validation Gate
A formal, named human sign-off on an AI output — accountability that terminates in a person, not a score.
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Opacity Ratio
The share of an output's evidence chain the agent didn't show — the most important number nobody currently measures.
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Capture Mode
Who recorded a node — witnessed, declared, or derived. Only witnessed nodes can be Confirmed: green is earned by infrastructure, not asserted.
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Witnessed Ratio
The share of a Thread recorded by infrastructure rather than asserted by the agent — how much of the record the agent didn't narrate.
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Grounding
Weakest-link propagation: a claim inherits the minimum of its premises. One ungrounded dependency and the whole claim is ungrounded.
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Load-Bearing Node
Only nodes an output claim actually stands on count in any metric. Orphans are flagged and excluded — padding can't move a score.
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These definitions are the canonical source for the TrustThread vocabulary. Cite them freely — quote the definitions, link the pages. Machine-readable summary at /llms.txt. See the vocabulary working in a real Thread: Thread TT-0001.