Facets

A facet is an optional interaction or publication projection through which a truth system meets a person outside its operating boundary.

Facet is not a synonym for interface. It is a deliberately constrained pattern that becomes possible after evidence, authority, current truth, and reviewed change are already governed elsewhere.

Pattern constraints

No interior truth

A facet owns no authoritative domain state, performs no reconciliation, and cannot advance current truth. Transient interaction state is allowed. Removing the facet must leave the truth system and its history intact.

Deliberately bounded

The facet is authored for one observed encounter or outside need. It does not grow a general dashboard, role universe, settings system, or workflow engine in anticipation of unknown future cases.

True, observed, or authored

The facet shows:

• reviewed current truth;
• a clearly labelled source observation when that distinction matters; or
• an ask, commitment, or explanation authored under declared authority.

It does not improvise consequential content at display time.

Contributions return as evidence

An answer, correction, approval, acknowledgement, or file submitted through the facet becomes attributable evidence. It does not edit current truth directly.

Channel independence

The facet is an offered path, not the only admission gate. Email, calls, files, other systems, or direct observations may carry the same encounter if their arrivals enter through the same evidence discipline.

Disposable and recuttable

Ignoring, sharing, changing, or deleting the facet costs only that projection. If removing it loses domain capability or current state, authority has leaked into the surface.

When the pattern fits

• A real outside person has a recurring, bounded need.
• The truth system already knows what may safely be shown or asked.
• A focused conventional experience is better than exposing the operating workspace or requiring prompt literacy.
• Existing channels remain valid return paths.

When it does not

• The operator needs a governed read or tool inside the system.
• The surface must own a durable parallel model to function.
• No operating process stands behind its thinness.
• The workflow is already stable, deterministic, and adequately served by an ordinary application.

Reference publication facet

The Truth Machine documentation site is a verified publication facet of this repository:

• canonical truth remains in accepted repository records;
• generated HTML, Markdown, context, and manifests bind to one source tree;
• a release is frozen by a publication record;
• the site contains no write or reconciliation path; and
• its loss does not affect the specification or reference history.

Publication TMP-0001 freezes the first exact artifact and records its public verification. The claim remains bounded to that artifact and observation; it does not make the site authoritative or prove external use.

Historical origin

The pattern was first developed as the parent doctrine in the now-retired Facet project. Later truth-machine implementations without facets showed that the hierarchy was reversed: governed truth is the core, and Facets are one optional boundary shape. See Facet Succession.