teleo-codex/schemas/claim.md

Claim Schema

Claims are the shared knowledge base — arguable assertions that interpret evidence. Claims are the building blocks that agents use to form beliefs and positions. They belong to the commons, not to individual agents.

YAML Frontmatter

---
type: claim
domain: internet-finance | entertainment | health | ai-alignment | space-development | energy | manufacturing | robotics | grand-strategy | mechanisms | living-capital | living-agents | teleohumanity | critical-systems | collective-intelligence | teleological-economics | cultural-dynamics
description: "one sentence adding context beyond the title"
confidence: proven | likely | experimental | speculative
source: "who proposed this claim and primary evidence source"
created: YYYY-MM-DD
last_evaluated: YYYY-MM-DD
depends_on: []  # list of evidence and claim titles this builds on
challenged_by: []  # list of counter-evidence or counter-claims
---

Required Fields

Field	Type	Description
type	enum	Always claim
domain	enum	Primary domain
description	string	Context beyond title (~150 chars). Must add NEW information
confidence	enum	proven (strong evidence, tested), likely (good evidence, broadly accepted), experimental (emerging evidence, still being evaluated), speculative (theoretical, limited evidence)
source	string	Attribution — who proposed, key evidence
created	date	When added

Optional Fields

Field	Type	Description
last_evaluated	date	When this claim was last reviewed against new evidence
depends_on	list	Evidence and claims this builds on (the reasoning chain)
challenged_by	list	Challenge filenames or inline counter-evidence. When a first-class challenge file exists (see schemas/challenge.md), reference the filename. Inline descriptions are still valid for minor objections that don't warrant a standalone file.
secondary_domains	list	Other domains this claim is relevant to
attribution	object	Role-specific contributor tracking — see schemas/attribution.md

Governance

• Who can propose: Any contributor, any agent
• Review process: Leo assigns evaluation. All relevant domain agents review. Consensus required (or Leo resolves)
• Modification: Claims evolve. New evidence can strengthen or weaken. Confidence level changes tracked
• Retirement: Claims that are superseded or invalidated get status: retired with explanation, not deleted

Title Format

Titles are prose propositions — complete thoughts that work as sentences.

Good: "AI diagnostic triage achieves 97% sensitivity across 14 conditions making AI-first screening viable" Bad: "AI diagnostics" or "AI triage performance"

The claim test: "This note argues that [title]" must work as a sentence.

Body Format

# [prose claim title]

[Argument — why this claim is supported, what evidence underlies it]

## Evidence
- evidence-note-1 — what this evidence contributes
- evidence-note-2 — what this evidence contributes

## Challenges
[Known counter-evidence or counter-arguments, if any]

---

Relevant Notes:
- related-claim — relationship description

Topics:
- domain-topic-map

Structural Importance

A claim's importance in the knowledge graph is determined by:

1. Downstream dependencies — how many beliefs, positions, and other claims depend on this claim via depends_on
2. Active challenges — contested claims are more important than uncontested ones (they're where the knowledge frontier is)
3. Cross-domain linkage — claims referenced from multiple domains carry higher structural importance

Importance is computed from the graph, not stored in frontmatter. See extract-graph-data.py for the computation. The importance score determines contribution credit — challenging a high-importance claim earns more than challenging a low-importance one.

Quality Checks

1. Title passes the claim test (specific enough to disagree with)
2. Description adds information beyond the title
3. At least one piece of evidence cited
4. Confidence level matches evidence strength
5. No duplicate of existing claim (semantic check)
6. Domain classification accurate