Ontological governance
Automated classification systems drift over time — categories multiply, vocabulary fractures, and extracted data accumulates errors faster than they can be corrected. Ontological governance is this platform's answer: a small set of reference vocabulary ledgers, kept deliberately narrow, plus a human-verification loop that forces extracted identity fragments through human review before they are permanently written into the verified ledger. For a regulated operator, this means the platform's identity records stay accurate without continuous automated re-classification.
The four vocabulary ledgers
service-content — entity extraction and knowledge-graph host serves four CSV reference ledgers over a config HTTP endpoint (/v1/config/*):
| Ledger | Governs |
|---|---|
| Archetypes | Named functional roles a firm can occupy (for example, "The Fiduciary", "The Guardian") |
| Chart of Accounts | The firm's personnel-role taxonomy (for example, "Compliance", "IT Support") |
| Domains | Bilingual glossaries defining the platform's three subject-matter macro-categories: Corporate (Finance), Projects (Real Estate), Documentation (Technology) |
| Themes | Named active initiatives (for example, "Co-Location Mandate Expansion") |
These are reference vocabulary, not an automated classifier — no code cross-references incoming content against the ledgers' keywords to assign a category. The one confirmed consumer is Verification Surveyor, where an operator manually tags an entity against the Archetypes/Chart of Accounts vocabulary during human review. Keeping the vocabulary small and infrequently revised is an editorial practice, not a rate-limited or code-enforced property of the ledgers themselves.
The verification loop
service-people — the identity ledger service uses a human-in-the-loop verification step to prevent automated extraction errors from entering the verified ledger. The process is described in detail at Verification Surveyor. In brief: the system isolates unverified identity fragments for operator review; the operator verifies each entity using their own personal browser and off-network lookup; the verified result is then committed to the ledger. The daily throughput limit ensures that operator attention remains high-fidelity rather than habitual.
Why a stable vocabulary matters for regulated operators
A small, infrequently-revised vocabulary produces a property that matters in regulated contexts: the base of the knowledge graph stays legible to audit. A procurement evaluator or compliance reviewer reading data classified against the Archetypes and Chart of Accounts vocabulary a year apart finds the same category names in use — the taxonomy has not fragmented underneath the data.
For financial disclosure purposes, this means that the platform's identity records do not introduce spurious variation into the record. An auditor querying "what has this firm classified as Compliance over the past three years" receives a meaningful answer because the category names have not shifted underneath the data.
See also
- Verification Surveyor — the human-in-the-loop agent that verifies identity fragments before they enter the ledger, and the one confirmed consumer of the Archetypes/Chart of Accounts vocabulary
- Archetypes and chart of accounts — the two ledgers that define firm identity and personnel-role taxonomy
- WORM ledger design — the append-only storage that makes the verified ledger authoritative