Decision Lineage Protocol
Open governance infrastructure. 19 primitives. 10 invariants. The grammar of organizational decision-making.
What is DLP
The Decision Lineage Protocol is the structural layer that turns a generic prediction engine into a governed decision system.
An LLM is a next-token prediction engine. Raw prediction is statistical pattern matching. It has no physics, no dynamics, no epistemics. It’ll predict whatever is coherent, not necessarily what is true. For consequential decision-making, that’s unacceptable.
DLP provides the missing structural layer:
19 Primitives
The irreducible vocabulary of governance. Every primitive maps to a distinct semantic function. No fewer than 19 is sufficient; no more than 19 is necessary.
10 Behavioral Invariants
The physics. What’s structurally possible and impossible. No state machine transition can violate B1-B10.
5-Tier Architecture
Canonical primitives → facet expressions → archetype specialization → user customization → instance state. Each layer compiles to the one below it.
Truth Type System
Distinguishes what you know (Authoritative) from what you declared (Declared) from what you derived (Derived). Every fact carries its epistemic status.
The protocol is runtime-agnostic. JEPA fits. LLMs fit. Future models fit. The invariants and truth types constrain the runtime but don’t care which runtime executes them. This is the socket. Your choice of runtime is the plug.
Specification
The full formal specification of the Decision Lineage Protocol.
- Formal semantics of the 19 primitives
- Proof that B1-B10 invariants are sufficient and necessary
- State machine definitions (SM-1 through SM-5)
- Truth type preservation across transformations
- Archetype specification (Early SaaS, Craft Retail, Solo Consultant, Freelance Creative)
- Projection definition language
- Resolution chain semantics
- Delegation and authority model