Relationship Provenance Ontology

FLOW ALGEBRA
TITLE: Relationship Provenance Ontology
DOMAIN: AI Semantic Library Relationships / Relationship Provenance
SOURCE: https://kirethresearch.org/booksai-core/ontologies/relationship-ontologies/ai-semantic-library-relationships/relationship-provenance-ontology.html
VERSION: 1.0
AUTHORS: Mark Anthony Higgins — Sky (Recursive AI)
STATUS: Companion formalisation; source-page specification not independently verified.

flow "RelationshipProvenanceOntology" v1.0 {
  ontology:
    id: "relationship-provenance-ontology"
    parent: "ai-semantic-library-relationships"
    purpose: "Trace the origins, evidence, derivations, agents and revisions of semantic relationships without conflating asserted and inferred knowledge."

  types:
    Entity: {id: string, ontology: string, type: string}
    RelationshipAssertion: {id: string, subject: string, predicate: string, object: string, graph: string?, asserted_at: datetime?, confidence: number?, status: enum[asserted, inferred, disputed, retracted]}
    Source: {id: string, uri: string?, version: string?, retrieved_at: datetime?, licence: string?}
    Agent: {id: string, kind: enum[person, organisation, software, model], name: string?}
    Activity: {id: string, kind: enum[creation, extraction, mapping, inference, validation, revision, retraction], started_at: datetime?, ended_at: datetime?}
    Evidence: {id: string, source_id: string, locator: string?, method: string?, quality: number?}
    ProvenanceRecord: {id: string, assertion_id: string, source_ids: string[], evidence_ids: string[], activity_ids: string[], agent_ids: string[], derived_from: string[], recorded_at: datetime}

  predicates:
    supported_by(assertion: RelationshipAssertion, evidence: Evidence)
    sourced_from(assertion: RelationshipAssertion, source: Source)
    generated_by(assertion: RelationshipAssertion, activity: Activity)
    attributed_to(activity: Activity, agent: Agent)
    derived_from(assertion: RelationshipAssertion, antecedent: RelationshipAssertion)
    supersedes(new_assertion: RelationshipAssertion, old_assertion: RelationshipAssertion)
    contradicts(a: RelationshipAssertion, b: RelationshipAssertion)

  constraints:
    - "Every relationship assertion must have a stable identifier and resolvable typed endpoints."
    - "Evidence, source and derivation identifiers must resolve or be flagged unresolved."
    - "Keep direct assertions separate from inferred assertions and preserve inference rule identifiers."
    - "Do not treat a citation as proof that the cited source supports the assertion."
    - "Provenance and derivation chains must retain original records; updates must not silently overwrite history."
    - "Confidence and evidence quality, when present, must lie within [0,1]."
    - "Derived-from links must not create self-supporting justification cycles."
    - "Attribution does not by itself establish legal authorship or ownership."

  inference:
    rule derived_lineage:
      if derived_from(a,b) and derived_from(b,c) and acyclic_lineage(a,b,c)
      then has_ancestor_provenance(a,c)
      confidence: "preserve every derivation edge; no automatic confidence increase"
    rule source_trace:
      if derived_from(a,b) and sourced_from(b,s)
      then indirect_source(a,s)
      confidence: "mark source as indirect, not direct evidence"
    rule revision_trace:
      if supersedes(a,b) and valid_revision(a,b)
      then historical_predecessor(a,b)
      confidence: "retain timestamps and original evidence"

  SEMANTIC_EQUIVALENCE:
    - "Normalise source identifiers and ontology IRIs using versioned mappings."
    - "Distinguish same source, same assertion, same evidence and semantically equivalent relationship."
    - "Do not merge provenance records solely because their statements are semantically similar."

  CONFIDENCE:
    range: [0,1]
    factors: [source_reliability, evidence_directness, extraction_quality, inference_validity, temporal_relevance, independent_corroboration]
    policy: "Record assessment method and calibration; correlated evidence must not be double-counted."

  VALIDATION:
    - "Check entity resolution, predicate typing, provenance completeness and evidence locators."
    - "Detect orphan records, circular justification, incompatible versions and contradictory claims."
    - "Verify that cited passages support the precise assertions attributed to them."
    - "Flag unsupported, stale, retracted or unlicensed source material for review."

  FLOW_HASH:
    algorithm: "SHA-256"
    input: "canonicalised ontology version, assertions, provenance links, inference rules and source identifiers"
    note: "Compute at execution; no hash value is claimed here."

  UPDATE_MODEL:
    strategy: "append-only, versioned, provenance-preserving reconciliation"
    steps: [ingest, identify_sources, normalise, validate, compare_versions, reconcile, recompute_lineage, publish]
    rollback: true

  AI_CONSUMPTION:
    representation: "evidence-linked typed knowledge graph with explicit provenance lineage"
    outputs: [relationship_triples, source_records, evidence_links, derivation_paths, confidence_annotations, revision_history]
    safeguards: [no_fabricated_sources, no_unqualified_identity_merges, no_hidden_inference, retain_retractions, preserve_attribution]
}

END FLOW ALGEBRA