Knowledge Governance

Knowledge governance is the set of rules that decides what an agent can use, how strongly that material should be trusted, and where a person must still make the call.

The Knowledge Operating System does not treat every saved note as knowledge. It keeps captured material, working notes, curated artifacts, promoted knowledge, private material, and archive material in separate lanes. Those lanes decide whether an item can be retrieved by default, retrieved only by request, or held out of retrieval.

The Governance Loop

flowchart LR
  capture["Captured material"] --> classify["Classify lane and sensitivity"]
  classify --> candidate["Candidate knowledge"]
  candidate --> curate["Curate with sources and relationships"]
  curate --> review{"Review"}
  review -->|needs work| candidate
  review -->|accepted| manifest["Manifest entry"]
  manifest --> retrieval["Eligible retrieval"]
  retrieval --> answer["Agent answer with source posture"]
  answer --> check["Human check"]
  check --> evaluate["Evaluation and updates"]
  evaluate --> classify

What Is Governed

Area	Governance question
Lane	Is this capture, working material, curated knowledge, promoted knowledge, private material, or archive material?
Sensitivity	Can this material be used in ordinary retrieval, or does it need a narrower path?
Source references	What sources support the useful claims?
Relationships	Which artifacts, claims, decisions, or experiences does this connect to?
Validation status	Is this unreviewed, self-checked, reviewed, or accepted?
Retrieval eligibility	Can an agent retrieve this by default, only by request, or not at all?
Human check	Where does a person approve, reject, or reinterpret the result?

Promotion

Promotion is the point where captured or working material becomes reusable knowledge. A promotion needs enough source context, a clear lane, and a review decision. If those pieces are missing, the item stays in candidate or working status.

Promotion is not a claim that the material is permanently true. It means the material has been reviewed enough to become reusable context for future work. Important claims still need a human check before anyone relies on them.

Retrieval

Retrieval should show where an answer came from and how settled the source is. An agent should not make a working note look like accepted knowledge, and it should not flatten an old artifact, a current guide, and a private record into the same kind of evidence.

The useful output is not just an answer. It is an answer with source posture: what was retrieved, what lane it came from, how recently it was reviewed, and what still needs judgment.

Limits

Governance improves the handling of knowledge. It does not make the knowledge correct by itself. A reviewed artifact can still become stale, incomplete, or wrong. The system helps preserve context and route review, but the person using the result still owns the final decision.