Concepts
The vocabulary OIDA uses in every answer. Five states, explicit supersession, scope on every decision.
Decision, topic and scope
A decision is a statement the organisation has adopted, about one topic, valid in one scope from one date. Topic and scope come from the workspace ontology: for example topic database, scope new-services. A decision valid for one team, one client or one plant is served only where it applies.
The five states of an answer
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Current | The approved decision in force now, with verified evidence. |
| Contested | A decision is in force, but an open conflict involves it. |
| Insufficient evidence | The topic exists. No approved decision meets the evidence conditions for this scope. |
| Unknown | No matching topic or evidence exists in the record. |
| Superseded | Listed in the answer as history, never as the current decision. |
The MCP response calls the current state verified. It means the decision satisfies OIDA’s conditions on evidence, authority, confidence and absence of unresolved conflict. It is an application-level status, neither a digital signature nor a guarantee that the decision is correct.
Supersession
A decision is replaced only by an explicit supersession: the successor names what it replaced. Both stay in the record. The successor is served as current, the predecessor as history. A newer document that contradicts a decision does not replace it. It becomes an open conflict.
Evidence and sources
Every decision points at the source that supports it and at the passage in that source. Answers carry those excerpts and references, never the whole document. OIDA also retains the source text explicitly submitted at ingestion; the upstream original stays in its own system.
Conflicts, unknown and insufficient evidence
Two assertions on the same topic, in overlapping scopes, with different values form a conflict. While it is open, the decision in force is served as contested. When a topic has no approved decision that meets the evidence conditions for the scope, the answer is insufficient evidence. When nothing in the record matches, the answer is unknown. The client is expected to pass these states on, and never to turn them into a guess.
Ontology
The ontology names the topics, scopes, source types and authority rules of a workspace. It changes through proposals: start_ontology or edit_ontology create a proposal, and an owner or admin approves it in a separate step. Versions are kept.