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Reconstructability

Equivalent Terms

No accepted equivalent terms are recorded yet.

Equivalent-term claims should be submitted through the proposal lifecycle and accepted only through a decision record.

Overlapping Terms

The following terms may overlap with reconstructability, but are not treated as identical without review:

  • auditability;
  • traceability;
  • explainability;
  • observability;
  • provenance, when used to describe information about entities, activities, and agents involved in producing data or artifacts. This overlaps with reconstructability but is not treated as equivalent unless the provenance record also supports reconstruction of why consequence had standing;
  • Audit and Accountability, when used in the NIST SP 800-53 sense of audit-related controls supporting accountability. This overlaps with Reconstructability because audit records can support reconstruction, but it is not equivalent unless the records also show why consequence had standing at the relevant decision boundary.

Adjacent Terms

The following terms are adjacent because they may support reconstruction without necessarily explaining why consequence had standing:

  • event history;
  • log retention;
  • forensic record;
  • post-event review;
  • incident analysis.

Definition

Reconstructability is the ability to recover enough information after an event to understand what happened and why a decision appeared to have standing.

It is related to auditability, but it is not identical to auditability.

Admissibility-Relevant Reconstruction

For admissibility, reconstruction must address more than event history.

It must help recover:

  • the authority posture;
  • the evidence posture;
  • the policy reference;
  • the review state;
  • the decision result;
  • the commit-time context.

Important Distinction

A system may reconstruct what happened without reconstructing why consequence had standing.

That distinction is central to transition governance.

Why The StegVerse Term Is Retained

The StegVerse term is retained because overlapping terms may preserve evidence, traces, or explanations without requiring reconstruction of admissibility, standing, and binding consequence.

governance:
proposal_link: "../../static/governance/proposals/proposal.example.009.json"
decision_link: "../../static/governance/decisions/decision.example.009.json"
replay_link: "../../static/governance/replay/decision.example.009.txt"
reconstruction_link: "../../static/governance/evidence/decision.example.009/README.md"
prior_relationship_link: "../../static/governance/decisions/decision.example.005.json"