Evidence, claims and their limits
Witnessability.
See what actually follows.
Understand what your evidence supports, what remains an assertion, and what you would need to establish more.
What is witnessability?
The capacity to produce, preserve and expose the evidence and reasoning for a particular claim — so its grounds, assumptions and limits can be evaluated and challenged.
Begin with three questions
Follow the evidence.
Keep its limits in view.
A signature, a log or a complete-looking report can be useful. The question is which conclusion it supports, in which context.
What needs to be established?
A request received, an action completed and an external effect are different propositions.
Understand the modelWhat was actually observed?
Identify the evidence, its source, the observation boundary and the assumptions connecting it to the claim.
Explore three examplesHow far does the support reach?
Keep supported findings, unassessed questions and refutations distinct. Then decide what to do with them.
Separate the decisionsBeyond software execution
Preserved bytes.
A different question about truth.
An archived document matches its earlier digest. That is useful evidence about fixity. It does not, by itself, establish that the document's original content was accurate.
Read the archival example| The question | The additional grounds |
|---|---|
| Unchanged? | Retrieved bytes and a trusted earlier baseline. |
| Authentic? | Identity, provenance and relevant custody conditions. |
| Accurate? | Evidence about what the document says happened. |
Each assessment retains its own scope and assumptions.
A small reading room
Useful distinctions,
made concrete.
Short explanations for researchers, engineers and people who must rely on records they did not produce.
What is witnessability?
The concept, in plain language. A place to begin.
02Verification, appraisal, reliance
Three questions that a single “verified” label can hide.
03What a tool call can establish
Where signed requests and logs reach their limits.
04When no record is found
How search scope and capture coverage change the conclusion.
Research you can inspect
Definitions, publications
and their provenance.
Read the source behind an explanation. Keep a stable release, a research paper, an Internet-Draft and an experimental result in their own contexts.
A stable source.
An explicit release record.
The published conceptual vocabulary, rendered as readable HTML. Original bytes, checksums, signatures and release records remain available separately.
Read Core 1.0Full release record and original files
Original GitHub release v1.0.0
Inspect release integrity
An invitation to examine
Bring a claim.
Bring the grounds.
Have a record, a counterexample or a question about an inference? A useful review starts with the exact proposition, the available evidence and the conditions that matter.
How to contributeSee how Witnessability and WEXP relate