Witnessed Ratio
NOUN · METRIC · AI PROVENANCE
The witnessed ratio is the share of a Thread's load-bearing nodes recorded by the instrumentation layer rather than asserted by the agent. It answers the most skeptical question a reader can ask of any AI record: how much of this did the agent not get to narrate?
In plain language
Every record has a narrator problem: whoever writes it decides what it says. The witnessed ratio measures how much of a Thread escaped its narrator — the share captured mechanically, by machinery the agent doesn't control, as the work actually happened. A Thread that's 80% witnessed is mostly testimony from the infrastructure. A Thread that's 10% witnessed is mostly the agent talking about itself.
It's a supplementary signal, deliberately kept apart from the three primary dimensions — but for a skeptical reviewer it's often the first number worth checking, because it bounds how much of everything else was self-reported.
See it live
Thread TT-0001 is hand-built, so its witnessed ratio is zero — nothing in it was recorded by instrumentation, and we'd rather tell you that than imply otherwise. Machine-witnessed Threads arrive with the product.
Pull Thread TT-0001 →Related terms
TERM COINED BY TRUSTTHREAD · FIRST PUBLISHED 2026-07-18 · DEFINITION V1 · THIS PAGE IS THE CANONICAL SOURCE