---
title: Trusted Knowledge Lifecycle
category: AI & Autonomous
icon: 🛡️
sort_order: 28
slug: trusted-knowledge-lifecycle
canonical_url: https://basaltnotes.com/guides/trusted-knowledge-lifecycle
markdown_url: https://basaltnotes.com/guides/trusted-knowledge-lifecycle.md
---
# Trusted Knowledge Lifecycle

Basalt tracks review state separately from note content and workflow status. A versioned `basalt.trust-record` identifies the target entity or block, its current fingerprint, evidence, reviewer, review deadline, and bounded lifecycle history.

## Lifecycle

- **Draft**: captured or imported, but not reviewed.
- **Reviewed**: a person reviewed the current source and fingerprint.
- **Verified**: reviewed evidence was explicitly verified.
- **Changed**: the observed fingerprint differs from the tracked fingerprint.
- **Stale**: a Reviewed or Verified record passed its review deadline.
- **Superseded**: another entity intentionally replaced this record.

Basalt does not infer a Verified state from an import, capture, model response, sync, or connector event. Invalid state jumps are rejected by the shared contract.

## Where trust appears

- **Pulse** ranks Changed, Stale, and Draft records as distinct attention signals.
- **Strata** shows trust state beside decision status and records confirmation, reaffirmation, drift, and supersession.
- **Quarries** expose bounded trust fields for structured views and future renderers.
- **Note inspector** can start a Draft record, review the current fingerprint, verify explicit evidence, reaffirm it, schedule another review, or link a superseding note.
- **Retrieval and Intelligence** carry the trust state with each source. Evidence drawers show it, and local or connected models are told to qualify claims supported only by Draft, Changed, Stale, Superseded, or untracked knowledge.

Canonical note writes reconcile tracked fingerprints automatically. A title or body edit changes the note record to **Changed**; records that cite the former source fingerprint also become **Changed**. Moving a note preserves its stable note identity and updates the tracked path. A multi-entry source index bounds this work to records that target or cite the changed note instead of scanning the full trust ledger on every editor save.

Every ledger write also emits a versioned `basalt.event` with entity identity, fingerprint, origin, correlation and causation identity, and depth. Current state and append-only events commit together in the local workspace database.

These contracts establish a portable v1 foundation. They do not claim that Basalt Schemas or a complete typed-object system are finished.