Consumer, channel and force can stay fixed while the governed use changes
Type: types/note.md · Tags: artifact-analysis
A behavioral-authority record names who consumes an artifact, through which channel, and with what force. That triple can stay the same while the use it governs changes. Two paths in a 2026-08-04 audit of Commonplace show it:
- A review gate scoped by trait. The explanatory-reach gate is read by a
reviewer, through the review channel, as an audit trigger. Its
requires_trait: title-as-claimline decides whether it acts on every note or only on the cohort with that trait. Changing the line changes which artifacts the gate judges. It does not change the consumer, the channel or the force. - A validator rule scoped by type and trigger. The tag-README completeness rule is read by the validator, through validation, with fail force. When it acts depends on three more things: the artifact's resolved type, which marked tag heads a change affects, and whether someone invoked validation.
In both cases, a record holding only consumer, channel and force fits several different paths. To pick out one, it also needs the path's applicability: the cohort, aspect or operation that receives the force, and the condition under which the force acts. This holds for any system whose rules carry their own scope, such as gates with trait filters or validators keyed to type. It does not depend on how Commonplace chose to scope its rules.
The same audit kept three neighbouring questions outside the record:
- Admission: whether the actor or decision was entitled to give this content force.
- Realization: whether a request reached the consumer it named.
- Dependency closure: which derived artifacts must change with a revised one.
A path can have force without legitimate admission, or a legitimate request that is never realized. It can also revise one artifact while dependent surfaces go stale. Folding these into behavioral authority would let an addressability finding pass as one about warrant or installation.
Scope
- Two witnessed cases show that the triple can under-identify a path. They do not show how often it does, or that applicability is the only missing dimension.
- Whether applicability becomes a fourth component or a required qualifier is left to the behavioral-authority decomposition proposal.
Relevant Notes:
- Behavioral authority — defined-in: the consumer, channel and force record whose identification limit this shows
- Six Commonplace paths establish broad addressability, not completeness — abstracted-from: the audit whose explanatory-reach and tag-README cases supply both witnesses
- Axes of artifact analysis — extends: scope is already recorded there as consumption-path metadata outside the triple
- A consumption channel delivers force without the history that earned it — contrasts: the admission question kept outside the record