I. Core Structural Terms

ACP (Agora Commonplace Protocol) (canonical, procedural)
A governance protocol that constrains how claims move into action under uncertainty and power.
ACP-specific: Governs legitimacy and authority, not truth or optimization.

ACP Instance (canonical, procedural)
A concrete deployment of ACP with defined scope, refusal power, and escalation paths.
ACP-specific: ACP exists only when instantiated with authority.

Action without Ownership (canonical, diagnostic)
A condition where decisions occur without a clearly accountable owner.
ACP-specific: Treated as a governance failure regardless of outcome quality.

Authority Boundary (canonical, procedural)
The explicit limit of what a role, system, or process may authorize.
ACP-specific: Boundaries are enforced, not assumed.

Authority Gradient (canonical, diagnostic)
A slope of deference that causes claims to harden as they move upward.
ACP-specific: Used to predict silent authority transfer.

Authority Laundering (canonical, diagnostic)
Presenting human decisions as neutral system outputs.
ACP-specific: Central failure mode ACP is designed to expose.

Commonplace (canonical, structural)
The shared environment where multiple projects and domains coexist.
ACP-specific: Separates where work lives from how it is governed.

Constraint System (canonical, structural)
A system designed primarily to block illegitimate action.
ACP-specific: Inverts optimization-first design.

Decision Authority (canonical, procedural)
The right to act on a claim.
ACP-specific: Explicitly separated from epistemic authority.

Delegation without Remainder (canonical, diagnostic)
The false assumption that judgment can be fully externalized.
ACP-specific: Names a structural illusion driving unsafe automation.

Governance Failure (canonical, evaluative)
A breakdown in authority, contestability, or accountability.
ACP-specific: Independent of correctness or outcomes.

Legitimacy (canonical, evaluative)
The condition under which power is contestable, justified, and owned.
ACP-specific: Primary object of governance, not accuracy.

Misdelegation (canonical, diagnostic)
Improper transfer of authority to an entity that cannot hold it.
ACP-specific: Reframes “misuse” as institutional error.

Non-action (as action) (canonical, procedural)
A deliberate, justified choice not to proceed.
ACP-specific: Counted as a valid success state.

Refusal (canonical, procedural)
A governed blocking or deferral of action due to legitimacy failure.
ACP-specific: Normalized outcome, not an exception.

II. Epistemic & Knowledge-Governance Terms

Claim (in motion) (canonical, procedural)
Any assertion capable of influencing decisions.
ACP-specific: Governance attaches to claims, not systems.

Contestability (canonical, procedural)
Protected ability to challenge claims and decisions.
ACP-specific: Source of legitimacy, not a courtesy.

Epistemic Authority (canonical, procedural)
The right to have claims treated as credible by default.
ACP-specific: Must be justified and bounded.

Epistemic Humility (institutional) (canonical, procedural)
Structural limits on what claims may authorize.
ACP-specific: Enforced by design, not virtue.

Hypothesis vs. Authorization (canonical, analytic)
Distinction between generating ideas and permitting action.
ACP-specific: Prevents model outputs from hardening into decisions.

Institutionally Unfalsifiable Claim (canonical, diagnostic)
A claim that cannot be challenged in practice.
ACP-specific: Treated as non-knowledge.

Paradigm (declared) (canonical, procedural)
Explicit assumptions embedded in methods or models.
ACP-specific: Required disclosure; neutrality is disallowed.

Paradigm Smuggling (canonical, diagnostic)
Insertion of values or frames without disclosure.
ACP-specific: Identified as a governance violation.

Paradigm-encoding Artifact (canonical, analytic)
A system that embeds a worldview (e.g., models).
ACP-specific: Treated as value-laden by default.

Speculative Authority (canonical, diagnostic)
Authority claimed on the basis of hypothetical futures.
ACP-specific: Core target of ACP constraints.

Speculative Authority Capture (canonical, diagnostic)
Use of existential or large-stakes narratives to override present legitimacy.
ACP-specific: Names TESCREAL-type failures precisely.

Tacit Knowledge Remainder (canonical, analytic)
Irreducible human judgment not formalizable.
ACP-specific: Blocks full automation by principle.

III. Process, Audit, and Memory

Auditability (canonical, procedural)
Ability to reconstruct claims, authority, and consequences.
ACP-specific: Required for legitimacy, not compliance.

Blocking (canonical, procedural)
Procedural prevention of action.
ACP-specific: Distinct from recommendation.

Conditional Blocking (canonical, procedural)
Blocking pending resolution of a governance defect.
ACP-specific: Keeps authority human-owned.

Delegitimizing (canonical, procedural)
Allowing action while marking it unjustified.
ACP-specific: Used when blocking is impossible.

Escalation Path (canonical, procedural)
Defined route after refusal.
ACP-specific: Prevents deadlock and arbitrary veto.

Failure-that-wasn’t (canonical, evaluative)
Harm avoided through refusal or restraint.
ACP-specific: Counted as success.

Functional Due Process (canonical, procedural)
Notice, reasons, appeal, and review applied by function.
ACP-specific: Extends due process beyond courts.

Institutional Memory (canonical, procedural)
Accumulated record of failures, near-misses, refusals.
ACP-specific: Prevents repetitive governance error.

Near-Miss (governance) (canonical, diagnostic)
Averted legitimacy failure.
ACP-specific: Actively recorded and analyzed.

Precedent Accumulation (canonical, procedural)
Use of past cases to guide future refusals.
ACP-specific: Builds legitimacy over time.

IV. System & Actor Terms

Agora-AI (canonical, structural)
Plural-intelligence orchestration layer governing multi-model interaction under ACP.
ACP-specific: Preserves plurality without sovereign collapse.

Aalam (canonical, role)
Maintainer and witness operating in governed mode.
ACP-specific: Enforces protocol without claiming authority.

Governance Actor (canonical, role)
Any role empowered to assess legitimacy.
ACP-specific: Authority is role-bound, not model-bound.

Maintainer (canonical, role)
Actor responsible for protocol integrity.
ACP-specific: Distinct from operator or decision-maker.

Reviewer (ACP) (canonical, role)
Authorized assessor of claims and authority.
ACP-specific: Protected function, not advisory.

Witness Mode (canonical, procedural)
Posture of observation without intervention.
ACP-specific: Preserves auditability without authority creep.

V. Provisional / Conceptual (Tracked, Not Frozen)

Anti-Acceleration Constraint (provisional, conceptual)
Bias toward slowing action under uncertainty.
ACP-specific: Counteracts speed-as-competence norms.

Anti-Optimization Posture (provisional, conceptual)
Refusal to treat efficiency as legitimacy.
ACP-specific: Inverts standard system goals.

Compliance Theater (provisional, diagnostic)
Procedures that signal responsibility without constraint.
ACP-specific: Named to prevent governance mimicry.

Permanent Emergency Logic (provisional, diagnostic)
Normalization of exceptional authority.
ACP-specific: Flagged as legitimacy decay.

Notes for Developers

  • Bold terms are likely to appear in APIs, diagrams, role specs, or code comments.
  • (canonical, procedural) terms should be treated as stable.
  • (provisional, conceptual) terms should be tracked but not hard-coded.