Docs · Glossary
Say precisely what you mean.
A protocol lives or dies by its vocabulary. These are the terms GOVP uses, defined once, cross-linked to the normative spec.
The record
- record
- A self-contained GOVP-1 object binding an asset to a publisher under a domain identity, sealed with an Ed25519 signature. The unit of evidence. Spec §1.
- asset
- The digital thing being fixed — a document, dataset, model, agent declaration, pipeline record or benchmark — identified by its SHA-256 fingerprint.
- publisher
- The named party making the declaration.
- canonical (URL)
- The HTTPS URL of the issuing identity — normally https://<domain>/.well-known/govp.txt — that binds a record to its domain.
- signing input
- The deterministic byte string that gets signed: domain separator + lowercased, trimmed, alphabetically sorted key: value lines. Spec §5.
- domain separator
- The 16 bytes "GOVP::record.v1" + 0x00 prefixed to every signing input so a GOVP signature can never be replayed as another kind of message.
- GOVP-ID
- The content-derived identifier GOVP-<TYPE>-<12 hex>, recomputable by anyone from asset-type, asset-id and asset hash. Spec §7.
- type code
- The registered short code per asset type: DOC, DATA, MODEL, AGENT, PIPE, BENCH. Spec §8.
- profile
- A named label of guarantees or conventions. Time-anchoring profiles: GOVP-BASIC, GOVP-RFC3161, GOVP-QTSP. Sector profiles label the use case only. Spec §9.
- bundle
- The optional JSON companion of a text record, for machine consumption. The text record is canonical.
- evidence (URL)
- Where the declared asset or its statement is published, so a verifier can fetch and hash it.
Verification
- core-valid
- The verdict when every applicable check passes: format, signature, canonical binding (if fetched), GOVP-ID, asset hash (if available). Spec §10.
- offline verification
- Verifying from the record alone — no network, no account, no contact with the issuer or with GOVP. A pure function of the bytes.
- domain binding
- The check that a record fetched from a URL matches its canonical field, detecting silent re-hosting. Skipped — and reported as skipped — for local files.
- issuer-asserted time
- Under GOVP-BASIC, generated-at is a claim by the issuer, not independently anchored. GOVP states this rather than implying otherwise.
- backdating
- An issuer minting a record with an earlier asserted date. Prevented only by anchoring profiles or independent witnesses — never by a bare record.
Sources & trust
- source
- Any heterogeneous input to a claim — an in-toto attestation, sensor reading, calibration certificate, firmware bill, ERP export, human approval — normalized to a common model.
- SVL
- Sources Verification Layer: every source passes a verifier specific to its type before it counts. No source validates itself. Protocol layer 2.
- anchor registry
- The registry — outside a source's own control — where its origin must be authorized for the source to verify.
- source states
- verified · failed · expired · revoked · unavailable · declared_only. Only verified sources feed trust; the rest are recorded, never counted.
- witness
- An independent node that fetches a peer's record, verifies it, and signs what it saw and when. Every honest witness makes backdating harder.
- mesh
- The network of domain nodes publishing, discovering and witnessing each other — no central registry. The network.
- consortium
- A closed member set (a supply chain, an association) running the mesh among themselves with a shared anchor registry. Same trust math, defined membership.
- T = V × I × Q
- Corroborated trust: verified sources × effective independence (anti-Sybil) × verification quality. Trust is computed, never granted.
- Sybil resistance
- The property that many sources controlled by one party add no more effective independence than one. Built into the I factor.
- conclusion
- The recomputable terminal node of a DAG of verified sources — marked verified end-to-end only when every input passed. Protocol layer 4.
- transparency log (local)
- A node's own append-only journal. Useful, but not public transparency — its admin could rewrite it; external anchoring or cross-witnessing is what hardens history.
- revocation
- Withdrawing a source's authorization or a record's standing via its anchor, moving dependent sources to the revoked state.
Ecosystem
- .well-known
- The published contract of an issuing domain: govp.txt (identity), govp/index.json (discovery), govp/<id>.govp (records). HTTP surface.
- node
- A domain that serves the .well-known contract — and optionally participates in discovery and witnessing.
- golden vector
- A conformance test record with pinned expected values — canonical-bytes hash, GOVP-ID, per-check verdicts — that every implementation must reproduce exactly. Conformance.
- GOVP-CORE-CONFORMANCE-1
- The current conformance suite: 8 golden vectors covering the format's happy paths and required rejections.
- self-test
- The conformance vectors run inside an installation (e.g. the WordPress plugin), proving that deployment verifies byte-for-byte like the references.
- GOVP Studio
- The reference desktop application for issuing and verifying. Download.
- badge
- The visible marker linking a published claim to its verification. May say "verifiable"; must never say "approved". Show your evidence.