All notable changes to the Constitutional Architect Framework and the Seven Principles of Agentic Coordination are documented here.
All notable changes to the Constitutional Architect Framework, the Seven Principles of Agentic Coordination, and the ACE Protocol are documented here. Contributors are named against the changes they motivated.
Format: [version] · [date] · [document affected]
P5 — Principle of Quality Control (extended) Two requirements added to the technical specification. The quality gate must name the evidence stream the human can independently access to verify the output. The gate must require a deliberate human action rather than passive approval. These requirements connect P5 to the interpretability and intervention provisions of Article 14(4)(d) of the EU AI Act. Motivated by the two-surface articulation contributed by Jeremy Bouedo (NexArt).
P6 — Principle of Consistency The governing specification must not contain unresolved contradictions. Three failure modes are identified: explicit contradiction, where two instructions cannot both be followed; implicit ambiguity, where an instruction admits multiple valid readings with different execution outcomes; and mechanism-obligation mismatch, where the document certifies a capability its specified mechanism cannot deliver. Contributed by WLTGovernance.
P7 — Principle of Adaptation (extended) The normative statement now requires the governing document to declare when its content becomes stale and specify the conditions that require re-evaluation. A document that makes no staleness declaration silently asserts authority over a system it may no longer correctly describe. An evidence-based revalidation trigger has been added to the document-level technical specification: the document must name the boundary behaviour divergence thresholds at which re-evaluation is required regardless of time or scheduled events.
Theoretical groundings updated. Three independent scholarly traditions — safety engineering, measurement theory, and organisational theory — each independently identify the same structural requirements for governance instruments. When mapped onto the seven principles, all three produce consistent assignments across P1 through P7.
P1 — Principle of Purpose Added explicit scope condition for exploratory and generative agents. The principle now accommodates agents operating without a fixed objective, requiring that the exploration mode itself be explicitly specified with defined constraints. Hybrid and mode-shifting systems must specify transition criteria. Contributed by James Bach.
P3 — Principle of Authority (formerly: Principle of Boundary) Renamed. Authority is the correct concept: what the agent is and is not permitted to do, the source of that authority, and the conditions under which it may be extended, restricted, or revoked. Contributed by James Bach.
P5 — Principle of Quality Control Normative statement revised. Acceptance criteria must be demonstrably mapped to the reasonable expectations of identified stakeholders and any applicable obligations. Acceptance criteria that are not so mapped produce a false sense of security. Contributed by James Bach.
Initial publication of the Constitutional Architect Philosophy, Seven Principles of Agentic Coordination, and ACE Protocol.