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COOL IDEA™: name the independence level of every witness claim #30
Description
The recurring problem
"Independent" has been rediscovered three separate times in this repository with three different meanings, and the ambiguity has produced real defects:
- Prove basis-bound validated patch application #24's review spent several rounds establishing that fields compared only against each other prove nothing.
- Observation settlements cannot be bound to their basis evidence #26 was filed because a settlement's evidence could not be bound to anything at all.
- Bind observation settlements to their basis evidence #27 initially reached for an assertion that was tautological by construction, then landed on a two-route derivation — which is genuinely stronger, but not an independent implementation, and the PR had to say so in prose to avoid overclaiming.
Each time the fix was correct and the vocabulary was reinvented.
Proposal
A fixed ladder, cited by every witness claim:
| Level | Evidence |
|---|---|
| I0 — Shape | Field exists and is well-formed |
| I1 — Non-self comparison | Compared against some other value |
| I2 — Independent route | Same semantic value reached by distinct execution or dataflow paths |
| I3 — Independent implementation | Value recomputed by separate code |
| I4 — Independent producer | A separate system, compiler, or runtime agrees |
| I5 — Adversarial mutation | A plausible false producer is introduced and caught |
Worked example, from #27:
externalEvidenceDigestbinding: I2 + I5attemptId,schemaAdmissionEvidenceDigest: I0 (see Two projected settlement identities carry no witness #28)- Cross-runtime conformance, if it ever arrives: I4
Why it earns its keep
The levels are not decoration. They make two failure modes visible on sight:
- A claim asserted at I0/I1 while described in prose as if it were I3+.
- A suite where evidence strength varies wildly between adjacent assertions and the assertions look identical.
I2 in particular deserves its own rung. It is much stronger than I1 and much weaker than I3, and it is the level most reachable inside a single repository — which makes it the one most likely to be quietly oversold.
Acceptance
- The ladder is written down once, in
docs/. - New witness cases cite a level.
- Existing cases are labelled opportunistically, not in a sweep.
Provenance
Surfaced by an external review of the #26/#27 session. Recorded here because the vocabulary gap is real and this repository keeps paying for it.
Activity
coderabbitai commentedon Aug 4, 2026
🔗 Related PRs
#20 - Record dependency-satisfied review outcomes [merged]
#21 - Prove typed Hello Echo result recovery [merged]
#27 - Bind observation settlements to their basis evidence [open]
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