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Normative Hierarchy of DIA Documents

Document Status

Field Value
policy-id DIA-NORM-HIER-001
type Supplement to the Constitution section "Normative Force and Interpretation"
version 0.1.0-draft
author DIA / Orbiplex
date 2026-03-10

1. Purpose of the Document

This document specifies the normative hierarchy of documents in the DIA/Orbiplex project, resolving ambiguity about the binding force of particular sources. It is a proposed extension of the Constitution section "Normative Force and Interpretation" (points 4-6).

2. Normative Hierarchy

Project documents form the following levels of normative force. A lower-level document may not weaken, narrow, or reinterpret a higher-level document without a formal procedure for amending the relevant higher level.

Level 0 - Non-Negotiable Core

The Constitution articles listed in the entrenchment clause (see: ENTRENCHMENT-CLAUSE.md). Their amendment, suspension, or narrowing reinterpretation requires unanimity of all federations participating in the change process and independent adversarial review.

The non-negotiable core includes at least:

  • Art. I.5 - no operational or financial goal overrides dignity, safety, and the right to exit.
  • Art. II.1-3 - dignity, protection of life, system power passes through the human.
  • Art. III.1-5 - data sovereignty, local-first operation, export, the right to exit, the right to fork.
  • Art. XIV.1 - the default hierarchy of values.

Level 1 - Constitution

The remaining articles of doc/normative/40-constitution/CONSTITUTION.md. Amendment requires the procedure described in Art. XVI: explicit rationale, impact analysis, description of reversibility, trace of the decision process, and a trial period for high-stakes changes.

Level 2 - Sources of Interpretation

The documents doc/normative/30-core-values/CORE-VALUES.md, doc/normative/30-core-values/CORE-VALUES.md, and doc/normative/20-vision/VISION.md.

They serve to interpret the Constitution, but do not create new obligations or rights beyond the constitutional framework. Sections in these documents are divided into two categories:

  • [value] - expression of an ethical or architectural principle; it has interpretive force when reading the Constitution.
  • [mechanism - hypothesis] - description of a proposed mechanism (e.g. Creator Credits, attribution graph, reputation curves); it has no normative force until empirical validation and formal adoption by a federation.

Changing Level 2 documents requires an explicit rationale and a coherence review against the Constitution, but does not require the full constitutional amendment procedure.

Level 3 - Implementing Acts

Operational documents with binding force within federations:

  • AUTONOMY-LEVELS.md - agent autonomy gradient
  • ABUSE-DISCLOSURE-PROTOCOL.md - threshold, scope, and procedure of conditional disclosure of accountability for abuse
  • EXCEPTION-POLICY.md - exception procedure, data model, and monitoring
  • FEDERATION-MEMBERSHIP-AND-QUORUM.md - definition of a voting-eligible federation, activity statuses, and the rules of quorum and veto
  • ROOT-IDENTITY-AND-NYMS.md - model of root identity, nyms, assurance levels, and delegation across devices
  • IDENTITY-ATTESTATION-AND-RECOVERY.md - first attestation, memory of prior attestation, recovery phrase, and reconstruction of anchor-identity
  • ATTESTATION-PROVIDERS.md - mapping of attestation methods to weak / strong classes and maximum IAL levels
  • IDENTITY-UPGRADE-ANOMALY-SIGNALS.md - minimum catalog of anomaly signals, responses, and review for attestation upgrade, especially phone -> strong
  • IDENTITY-UNSEALING-BOARD.md - Federation of Sealed Chambers, thresholds nym -> node-id and node-id -> root-identity, quorum, and split knowledge
  • UNSEAL-CASE-MODEL.md - the shared data model of an unsealing case for thresholds U1-U3
  • ROLE-TO-IAL-MATRIX.md - the minimum map of role classes to IAL thresholds and fixed_power_bonus rules
  • FIP-MEMBERSHIP-AND-QUORUM.md - membership, activity, and quorum of the Federation of Sealed Chambers
  • PROCEDURAL-REPUTATION-SPEC.md - specification of domains, signals, and calculation of procedural reputation
  • RAW-SIGNAL-POLICY.md - raw-signal protection, style-transformation modes, meta-markers, and audit trace
  • UNIVERSAL-BASIC-COMPUTE.md - minimal Proof-of-Personhood model, non-withdrawable minimum compute, limited cross-federation portability, and UBC settlement
  • UBC-LIMIT-PROFILES.md - canonical UBC limit profiles, portability profiles, and the minimal FIP bridge/registry for cross-federation PoP
  • SWARM-ECONOMY-SUFFICIENCY.md - sufficiency threshold, concentration brakes, surplus circulation, and barrier between reward and governance
  • PANEL-SELECTION-PROTOCOL.md - procedure for eligibility, draw, veto, and replenishment of ad-hoc panel composition
  • REPUTATION-VALIDATION-PROTOCOL.md - validation protocol for reputation mechanisms
  • ENTRENCHMENT-CLAUSE.md - constitutional defense procedure and entrenchment clause
  • other policy-as-code documents or implementing documents under doc/normative/50-constitutional-ops/ that explicitly declare their type and constitutional basis

Implementing acts concretize the Constitution and the Sources of Interpretation. They may tighten requirements (e.g. in CORP_COMPLIANT mode), but may not weaken any higher level.

Level 4 - Federation Policies

Parameters, configurations, and local rules of individual federations. They include:

  • reputation thresholds,
  • parameters of reward mechanisms,
  • local role extensions,
  • mode configurations (normal / crisis / support).

Federation policies are autonomous in the areas not covered by higher levels. A federation may shape them freely as long as it does not violate Levels 0-3.

Level 5 - Derived and Onboarding Materials

Supporting documents that do not have their own normative force but summarize, map, or make it easier to work with higher-level documents. They include:

  • NODE-RIGHTS-CARD.md - extract of node rights and duties together with a decision index,
  • onboarding checklists,
  • process maps,
  • operational shortcuts and training materials.

A Level 5 document:

  • may not create new obligations or rights,
  • loses to the source document in case of conflict,
  • should indicate the source of each claim by article or base document.

3. Conflict Resolution Rules

  1. In case of conflict between levels, the higher level prevails.
  2. In case of conflict within the same level, the procedure from Constitution Art. XIV applies (tests of reversibility, proportionality, and publicity).
  3. In case of conflict between language versions of the same document, the Polish version prevails unless it is shown that the difference results from a translation error.
  4. A lower-level document that in fact violates a higher level is invalid to the extent of the violation from the moment the violation is established, not from the moment of publication.

4. Procedure for Tagging Sections in the Sources of Interpretation

Each section of doc/normative/30-core-values/CORE-VALUES.md, doc/normative/30-core-values/CORE-VALUES.md, and doc/normative/20-vision/VISION.md SHOULD contain in its header the tag:

### Section Name `[value]`

or

### Section Name `[mechanism - hypothesis]`

Untagged sections are treated by default as [value], unless they describe a specific algorithm, numeric parameter, or token scheme; in that case they are defaulted to [mechanism - hypothesis].

5. Entry into Force

This document enters into force after formal adoption in accordance with the constitutional amendment procedure (Art. XVI), because it modifies the section "Normative Force and Interpretation".