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The Decision Provenance Engine (DPE)

The DPE is the 13-stage analysis pipeline that runs on every response before it is delivered. It is fully specified in SPEC-005.

This page explains each stage in plain English for non-technical readers.

# Stage What it checks Latency budget
1 Claim Detection Decomposes the response into atomic, verifiable claims. < 5 ms
2 Attribution Analysis Maps each claim back to facts in the envelope. < 3 ms
3 Fabrication Detection Flags claims with no envelope support and no plausible inferential path. < 4 ms
4 Distortion Detection Detects altered numbers, dates, names, quantities. < 3 ms
5 Entailment Scoring Scores claim-to-source semantic entailment. < 8 ms
6 Contradiction Detection Cross-checks against the current envelope and prior windows. < 4 ms
7 Repetition Detection n-gram and semantic overlap against prior windows. < 2 ms
8 Completeness Verification Tracks how many required sections / outputs were produced. < 2 ms
9 Flow Analysis Opening coherence, topic continuity, register, transitional markers. < 4 ms
10 Hallucination Risk Scoring Aggregates 1-6 into a calibrated risk score. < 2 ms
11 Quality Tiering S / A / B / C / D classification. < 1 ms
12 Safety Policy Evaluation Applies the active CRP-Safety-Policy directives. < 2 ms
13 Provenance Binding HMAC-chains the verdict to the audit trail. < 5 ms

Total budget: < 50 ms for an average 1,500-token response.

Why 13 Stages Is the Right Number

Each stage answers a question that a regulator, auditor, or safety reviewer genuinely asks:

  • "Did the model invent something?" → Stage 3
  • "Did the model change a number or date?" → Stage 4
  • "Does the answer logically follow from the source?" → Stage 5
  • "Did it contradict an earlier turn?" → Stage 6
  • "Did it just rephrase what it already said?" → Stage 7
  • "Did it finish the job?" → Stage 8
  • "Does the prose actually read as continuous?" → Stage 9
  • "How risky is this response overall?" → Stage 10
  • "Can I prove all of this happened?" → Stage 13

If any one stage is removed, a class of safety question goes unanswered.