Authority Research Note
Provability Boundaries
A provability boundary is a point where deterministic guarantees derived from source artifacts terminate. When a boundary is present, no authority can claim behavior beyond that point without additional evidence. Legacy Lens records boundaries explicitly and refuses to assert guarantees past them.
What this construct does
A provability boundary is not a defect. It is a property of code and runtime environments. Some constructs make behavior dependent on runtime state that source artifacts cannot fully reveal.
Why provability terminates
Static, deterministic evidence can only prove what is present in the artifact set. When a construct depends on runtime resolution, dynamic dispatch, or opaque execution domains, deterministic proof cannot continue.
Governance consequence
In strict regulated contexts, any provability boundary terminates deterministic migration guarantees. A decision to proceed becomes non-defensible without eliminating the boundary or expanding the evidence set.
Evidence and verification
- Legacy Lens binds findings to an evidence bundle with cryptographic hashes.
- The same input produces the same findings and the same hashes.
- Boundaries are recorded as evidence, not treated as claims.
Verified authority record
View a verified bundle that records this boundary: Download authority record (PDF)