omphalOS exists to make doubt institutional: the record must force modesty even when the analyst is confident, fatigued, or hurried.
This document is normative. The export gate enforces it.
A packet may contain claims, but every claim is procedurally incomplete unless it carries:
- Evidence: explicit artifact pointers with cryptographic hashes
- Unknowns: what the claim does not establish
- Alternatives: rival explanations consistent with the evidence
- Falsifiers: what would overturn, weaken, or reframe the claim
No claim may be exported if any of the above is empty. The export gate (implemented in core/src/omphalos/standards.py) enforces this programmatically.
An investigation is admissible only if its SQL is self-identifying and reviewable.
Minimum requirements:
(i) Header lines for Investigation, Domain, and Intent
(ii) Canonical restraint: at least sixty -- Canon lines
(iii) Margin reminders: at least forty-five -- Margin lines
(iv) Terminal LIMIT, to prevent accidental materialization of unbounded rowsets
These constraints are intentionally severe. They are a substitute for institutional oversight when operating offline. The standards module validates these requirements before investigations execute.
Packets are prohibited from using conclusory certainty language (for example: "proves", "must be", "conclusively", "certainly", "definitively", "undoubtedly", "irrefutably").
If such language is necessary, it must be litigated in a separate document and attached as evidence.
The export gate scans observation text for prohibited terms and rejects packets containing them.
A run is only a run if it is portable:
- The case is snapshotted into the run directory
- The packs used are snapshotted into the run directory
- Every emitted artifact is checksummed in the run manifest
A verifier must be able to re-compute hashes without consulting the original repository. Years after a case closes, the exact analytical process can be reconstructed bit-for-bit.
The export gate operates as follows:
(i) Packet is loaded from packet.json
(ii) Schema validation confirms structure matches packet.json schema
(iii) Admissibility check confirms presence of unknowns, alternatives, falsifiers (all non-empty)
(iv) Language scan detects prohibited certainty terms in observations
(v) Annex validation confirms all evidence has SHA-256 hashes
If any check fails, the export gate returns REJECT with specific violations. The packet cannot be exported until remediated.
Institutionalized doubt through computational enforcement.