Glossary
Veritas is the product for repo and AI-agent governance. Surface is the transparency layer Veritas is built with. Veritas users should think in repo-native language; Surface-format claims and evidence are emitted at the boundary.
Canonical Veritas Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Veritas | A repo and AI-agent governance product for earning trust in AI-authored code changes. |
| Repo Standards | The maintained definition of what good looks like for a repository. |
| Standards File | The repo-local machine-readable artifact that stores repo standards. |
| Repo Standards Template | A reusable starting point for repo standards, tailored to a repo type, language stack, or workflow. |
| Repo Map | The repo-local model of work areas, change boundaries, protected areas, ownership context, and dependency relationships. |
| Work Area | A meaningful part of a repository with a purpose, ownership context, and change expectations. |
| Change Boundary | A coordination or risk threshold around a work area. Crossing it can add evidence, guidance, authority, or coordination requirements. |
| Boundary Crossing | A change that touches a work area outside the expected scope, authority, or dependency path for the current work. |
| Protected Area | A high-risk work area where changes require stronger authority or evidence. |
| Requirement | A condition in the repo standards that must be satisfied, evidenced, or accepted by exception. |
| Requirement Applicability | The condition that determines when a requirement matters for a change, repo state, release, recurring interval, work area, or boundary crossing. |
| Enforcement Level | How strongly Veritas applies a requirement: Observe, Guide, or Require. |
| Observe | Records evidence and outcomes without guiding or blocking work. |
| Guide | Gives just-in-time correction or review feedback without by itself preventing merge readiness. |
| Require | Requires fresh evidence or authority-backed exception before merge readiness or repo conformance is complete. |
| Evidence | A traceable result, observation, artifact, attestation, or record that supports, challenges, or qualifies a requirement. |
| Evidence Check | A runnable or inspectable check that produces evidence for one or more requirements. |
| Evidence Freshness | Whether evidence still applies to the current change, including commit, diff, files, standards version, authority state, dependencies, and time policy. |
| Recheck | An action that verifies evidence, authority, freshness, or integrity again for the current change. |
| Verification Authority | A person, system, tool, environment, or policy source trusted to verify a specific requirement. |
| Authority Evidence | Evidence explaining why a verification authority was allowed to count for a requirement. |
| Attestation | Evidence from a verification authority asserting that something was verified, accepted, approved, or reviewed. Every attestation may carry an authorizing block (collection provenance) recording how the act was authorized: explicit-statement (standalone named act), exchange (prompt/response pair from a delegated approval conversation), or authorized-action (UI-driven control action with prompt ref, rendered prompt, action type, and authority ref). Old records without an authorizing block remain valid. |
| Exception | An authority-backed decision to accept an unmet or failing requirement for a specific change. |
| Change Guidance | Just-in-time instructions for a developer or agent when a requirement, work area, boundary, or evidence result matters. |
| Merge Readiness | The per-change trust state that says whether a change has enough current evidence to merge under the repo standards. |
| Readiness Report | The human- and agent-facing report that explains a change’s merge readiness. |
| Readiness Coverage | The current evidence state for the requirements that apply to a specific change. |
| Repo Conformance | Whether the repository as a whole currently satisfies standing requirements in its repo standards. |
| Protected Standards | The parts of the repo standards and repo map that define what good looks like, where boundaries are, or who is trusted to verify requirements. |
| Standards Growth | Additive improvements to repo standards that do not weaken protected standards without required authority. |
| Generated Evidence | Readiness reports, evidence records, conformance outputs, feedback, and other artifacts generated by Veritas. |
| Standards Feedback | Observed evidence about whether repo standards are helping, missing coverage, creating noise, or failing to catch issues. |
| Standards Recommendation | A suggested change to repo standards based on standards feedback. |
| Built with Surface | The product signal that Veritas uses Surface for portable transparency state. |
Implementation names that predate this glossary are not canonical Veritas vocabulary. Track renames in Migration Guide, not in the product glossary.
Surface Mapping
Veritas emits Surface-format trust state as a producer. The mapping is intentionally one-way: Veritas owns repo governance language and Surface owns portable transparency primitives. The canonical mapping with artifact contract details is in Surface-Veritas Boundary.
| Veritas concept | Surface projection |
|---|---|
| Requirement evaluation | Claim, evidence, policy, and event describing whether the requirement was satisfied |
| Evidence Check result | Evidence and verification event |
| Verification Authority | Authority trace, policy context, or verifier metadata |
| Attestation | Evidence with authority and integrity context |
| Evidence Freshness | Freshness, Changed Since Verified, or Expired Verification |
| Exception | Authority-backed evidence plus metadata explaining the accepted unmet requirement |
| Merge Readiness | Domain validity claim or trust snapshot summary emitted by Veritas |
| Readiness Coverage | Claims, evidence, gaps, conflicts, and freshness outcomes |
| Repo Conformance | Standing claims and evidence about repo-wide requirements |
| Protected Standards | Claims and evidence about standards/map integrity and authority |
| Standards Recommendation | Proposed claim and evidence supporting a standards change |
Surface terms such as Claim, Evidence, Policy, TrustBundle, TrustReport, and Transparency Gap are valid when documenting the Surface boundary or API. They should not replace Veritas’ user-facing terms in normal product docs.