Glossary
Shared language beats shared vibes.
This glossary defines the primitives used across Forged Culture. If a term shows up in a protocol, it should mean the same thing everywhere.
Core terms
Illegibility
When artifacts and dashboards stop correlating with understanding, accountability, and recoverability. Work looks “done,” but decisions cannot be reconstructed and failures cannot be cleanly reversed.
Receipts
Evidence that survives scrutiny. Not persuasion, not confidence, not consensus.
Admissible proof metric
A metric that is hard to fake and tied to reconstructability, reversibility, contestability, or operator ownership. Vanity metrics do not qualify.
Protocol
A runnable instrument with inputs, steps, and outputs. It is designed to work under load.
Field Protocol
A protocol that can be run in live conditions, with a timebox, and produces evidence.
OTW (Owner, Timebox, Witness)
Owner: the accountable human for the next delta.
Timebox: the maximum time you will spend before shipping or stopping.
Witness: what observes completion.
Evidence: what exists afterward that proves completion.
MPTT (Map, Probe, Trace, Teach)
Map: make decision rights, boundaries, and reversal paths explicit.
Probe: run a small test that forces a decision and reveals hidden coupling.
Trace: capture the decision chain and evidence needed to reconstruct what happened.
Teach: convert the trace into a reusable instrument within 14 days.
Default admissible proof metrics (starter set)
Decision chain completeness score
How often you can reconstruct who decided what, why, and with what authority.
Tool-light explanation score
Whether an operator can explain the system accurately with minimal tooling and without hand-waving.
Time-to-revoke
Time from “stop” to actual revocation of delegated access or action.
Audit completeness
Whether required artifacts exist for reconstructability (logs, approvals, configs, change records), even if the content is confidential.
Disproof
A concrete result that shows a claim, protocol, or metric does not hold in this context. Disproof is not failure. It is boundary definition.