Distributed Cognitive Network

Volume IV

Actum Verifiable Cognition Profile 0.1

Part 1

Philosophy, Object Model, Canonical Acts, and VSTP Mapping

1. Purpose

This specification defines how cognition becomes a verifiable historical object.

Previous volumes define:

• how Minds think,
• how K-lines learn,
• how experts are discovered,
• how markets allocate scarce cognition.

This volume defines how those events become:

• verifiable,
• attributable,
• replay-resistant,
• economically meaningful,
• permanently referencable.

This document extends Actum with a cognition profile.

Actum itself remains domain-neutral.

The cognition profile specializes it for AI.

2. Philosophy

Traditional blockchains record:

transfer

swap

contract call

NFT mint

governance vote

Those are financial or computational acts.

Our architecture treats cognition itself as something that produces verifiable acts.

Examples:

expert executed

episode completed

evaluation performed

K-line promoted

artifact compiled

artifact published

artifact superseded

settlement completed

These become first-class network objects.

3. Fundamental Principle

Actum never stores:

"truth"

Actum stores:

verifiable claims

Those claims consist of:

• who asserted something,
• under which authority,
• supported by which evidence,
• concerning which objects,
• producing which state transition.

Everything else remains interpretation.

4. The Core Abstraction

The entire architecture is based on one concept.

Everything important is an:

Act

Formally:

Act

=

Authorized

State

Transition

+

Evidence

The evidence may be:

• TLSNotary

• ZeroK proof

• Evaluation

• Human signature

• TEE

• Local runtime

• Deterministic replay

or something invented ten years from now.

Actum itself remains evidence-neutral.

5. State

Actum reasons about state.

Not objects.

Objects merely participate in state transitions.

Example:

Before

Artifact

status = candidate

↓

PromotionAct

↓

After

Artifact

status = promoted

The promoted artifact is not "stored by the PromotionAct."

The PromotionAct explains:

why the state changed.

6. Every Act Has Four Parts

Every cognition act SHALL contain:

Intent

Authority

Evidence

Transition

or graphically:

Intent
      │
Authority
      │
Evidence
      │
Transition

Removing any one of these weakens the system.

7. Intent

Intent answers:

What was supposed to happen?

Examples:

Execute coding task.

Evaluate artifact.

Compile K-line.

Promote candidate.

Purchase execution.

Publish artifact.

Intent is never inferred.

It is explicit.

8. Authority

Authority answers:

Who was allowed to request this?

Examples:

buyer

organization

human

agent

delegation

policy

contract

Authority is distinct from cognition.

An excellent K-line does not acquire authority merely because it is successful.

9. Evidence

Evidence answers:

Why should anyone believe this happened?

Evidence examples:

TLSNotary

TEE

ZeroK

Evaluation

Signed runtime

Human review

Benchmark

External certificate

Evidence is attached.

Not embedded.

10. Transition

Transition answers:

What changed?

Examples:

Job

OPEN

↓

VERIFIED

or

Artifact

candidate

↓

promoted

or

K-line

active

↓

superseded

The transition is the thing Actum finalizes.

11. VSTP

VSTP remains the semantic model.

Recall:

S_i

↓

Action

↓

S_i+1

Every cognition act is therefore:

Prior State

+

Intent

+

Authority

+

Evidence

↓

Resulting State

This is now the canonical Actum pattern.

12. General Act Schema

Every Act SHALL contain:

ActID

Type

Subject

Intent

Authority

Evidence

Prior State Commitment

Result State Commitment

Timestamp

Issuer

Version

Extensions MAY add fields.

Core semantics remain stable.

13. Subject

An Act always concerns one or more subjects.

Examples:

Expert

Artifact

Template

Episode

Evaluation

Settlement

Execution

Market Offer

Subjects remain external objects.

Acts describe changes concerning them.

14. Canonical Cognition Acts

Version 0.1 defines:

ExecutionAct

EvaluationAct

PromotionAct

CompilationAct

ArtifactPublicationAct

SupersessionAct

SettlementAct

KLineEpisodeAct

Later versions may extend this list.

15. ExecutionAct

ExecutionAct records:

this cognitive execution occurred.

It does not state:

this answer is correct.

It states:

• these inputs,

• this execution,

• this evidence,

• this result commitment,

• this authority.

16. EvaluationAct

EvaluationAct records:

an evaluation was performed.

It contains:

• protocol,

• evaluator,

• environment,

• distribution,

• metrics,

• evidence.

It never claims universal correctness.

17. PromotionAct

PromotionAct records:

cognition moved into System 1.

Promotion is therefore historical.

It can later be revoked.

18. CompilationAct

CompilationAct records:

Artifact B was produced from Template K using Episodes E.

This creates permanent lineage.

19. ArtifactPublicationAct

Publishing is separate from compilation.

An artifact might exist privately.

Publishing creates:

discoverable

shareable

licensable

state.

20. SupersessionAct

Nothing disappears.

Old artifacts remain.

New artifacts supersede them.

History remains intact.

21. SettlementAct

SettlementAct represents:

economic completion.

Importantly:

Settlement SHALL reference Execution.

Execution SHALL NOT reference Settlement.

This preserves causality.

22. KLineEpisodeAct

Episodes are perhaps the most important object.

An episode records:

Problem

↓

Activation

↓

Bindings

↓

Execution

↓

Evidence

↓

Outcome

That entire trajectory becomes historically referencable.

23. Act Lineage

Acts themselves form a graph.

Example:

Execution

↓

Evaluation

↓

Promotion

↓

Compilation

↓

Publication

↓

Settlement

Each act references previous acts.

Therefore cognition itself becomes lineage.

24. Why Acts Instead of Objects?

Objects answer:

What is this?

Acts answer:

How did it become this?

For cognition,

history matters.

25. Commitments

Acts should rarely store raw data.

Instead:

Prompt

↓

SHA256

↓

Commitment

Likewise:

Response

↓

Commitment

Likewise:

Artifact

↓

Commitment

This makes privacy much easier.

26. Mutable vs Immutable

Mutable:

SurrealDB

Current K-line

Current trust

Current goals

Current world state

Immutable:

Actum

Execution history

Promotion history

Compilation history

Settlement history

This separation is fundamental.

27. Local Interpretation

Actum says:

Evaluation happened.

Kline says:

I trust this evaluation.

Those are intentionally separate.

28. Replay Resistance

Every Act SHALL have:

Act ID

Commitment

Nullifier

The nullifier prevents:

duplicate settlement,

duplicate evaluation,

duplicate promotion,

duplicate execution claims.

29. Versioning

Acts SHALL never silently change.

Instead:

Version 1

↓

Version 2

↓

Version 3

through explicit supersession.

30. Human Readability

Although canonical serialization is deterministic,

Acts should also expose:

Summary

Description

Reason

to make provenance understandable by humans.

31. Machine Readability

Every semantic field SHALL also possess deterministic machine encoding.

Human explanations never replace canonical fields.

32. The Ledger of Cognition

Traditional ledgers record:

money.

Actum records:

history.

This cognition profile records:

the history of learned intelligence.

That is the defining idea of the architecture.

The network no longer merely accumulates facts.

It accumulates verifiable cognitive evolution.

33. Architectural Invariants

The following invariants SHALL hold:

1. Every important cognitive transition is represented as an Act.

2. Objects remain mutable; Acts remain immutable.

3. Provenance never replaces evaluation.

4. Evaluation never replaces authority.

5. Authority never replaces evidence.

6. Settlement always follows verified execution.

7. Promotion is historical, not permanent.

8. Compilation preserves lineage.

9. Supersession never destroys history.

10. The ledger records cognition, not merely computation.

34. Strategic Thesis

Software engineering transformed computation by making code reusable.

This architecture aims to transform intelligence by making successful cognition reusable, attributable, verifiable, and economically meaningful.

Actum is therefore not simply a settlement layer.

It becomes the permanent historical record of the network's evolving cognitive capital.

Every verified episode, every promoted K-line, every compiled artifact, every independent evaluation, and every economic settlement contributes to a shared, immutable history from which future cognition can learn without sacrificing local autonomy or trust.