Reconciliation and Coherence

Reconciliation determines what evidence can responsibly change. It is a judgment activity whose durable output is a proposed change—not a rewritten snapshot.

Reconciliation context

TM-REC-001 — Identified current state. Reconciliation MUST name the exact current-state revision or equivalent concurrency identity against which the proposed change was reasoned.

TM-REC-002 — Complete coherence boundary. Reconciliation MUST inspect the declared coherence boundary sufficiently to identify contradictions and dependent changes. A screen, row, source file, or task MUST NOT silently choose a smaller boundary.

TM-REC-003 — Authority evaluation. Reconciliation MUST evaluate each supporting claim under its bounded source authority and preserve material conflicts or gaps.

Proposed delta

TM-REC-004 — Exact delta. A consequential proposed change MUST identify the affected current records or values and their exact before and after states. An implementation may use replacement records, field operations, events, or another representation if the reviewed effect remains unambiguous.

TM-REC-005 — Support and rationale. A proposed change MUST cite its supporting evidence and state why that evidence, under its authority, supports the delta.

TM-REC-006 — Remaining uncertainty. A proposed change MUST preserve material uncertainty, disagreement, qualification, and unknowns remaining after reconciliation.

TM-REC-007 — Consequences. A proposed change MUST identify known dependent records, obligations, publications, or operations affected within the coherence boundary.

TM-REC-008 — Coherent grouping. Mutations whose partial application could create a contradiction MUST travel as one proposed change.

Reconciliation is not authority

The actor reconciling evidence may be highly capable and may produce the complete correct delta. That does not accept it.

TM-REC-009 — Proposal state. Reconciled work MUST remain distinguishable from accepted change and current truth until the declared review and transition boundary succeeds.

TM-REC-010 — Recoverable proposal. Stale or invalid proposed work SHOULD remain available with its evidence and rationale for deliberate revision or rejection. Refusing a transition should protect current truth, not erase the work that failed.

Choosing the boundary

The coherence boundary is domain-specific. Examples include one customer account, one infrastructure composition, one policy corpus, one financial period, or one specification release. The correct boundary is the smallest whole in which a local answer can create a hidden collision elsewhere.

Starting broad and then earning narrower sub-boundaries is safer than allowing interface layout or storage partitioning to define truth accidentally.