CIVIC PROVENANCE PROTOCOL

Civic Provenance Protocol (CPP) — v0.1¶

Purpose:
Provide a machine-verifiable "passport" for public-facing content (news, civic analysis, finance, health) that answers:

Who wrote this, what evidence did they use, how much did AI help, and has this article been altered since it was first published?

CPP is designed to work with the Mobius Civic Ledger and the Integrity Tier.

1. Design Goals¶

• Transparency: Explicitly disclose AI involvement and evidence.
• Verifiability: Allow anyone (human or machine) to verify content hashes, ledger attestations, and signatures.
• Evolvability: Support revisions and corrections without losing history.
• Interoperability: Embeddable in web pages, feeds, APIs, and ledgers.

2. Envelope Structure¶

CPP defines a JSON envelope:

{
  "version": "cpp.v1",
  "article": { ... },
  "sourceGraph": { ... },
  "aiInvolvement": { ... },
  "integrityAttestation": { ... },
  "revisionHistory": [ ... ],
  "signatures": [ ... ]
}

2.1 article¶

{
  "id": "article_2025_11_24_001",
  "title": "Auto Sales Rev Up in October",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://news.example.com/articles/...",
  "contentHash": "sha256:...",
  "publishedAt": "2025-11-24T09:30:00Z",
  "language": "en",
  "tags": ["economy", "auto", "pakistan"]
}

• contentHash is a SHA-256 hash of the canonical article text (after editors approve it).

2.2 sourceGraph¶

{
  "nodes": [
    {
      "id": "src1",
      "type": "article",
      "title": "IMF 2025 World Economic Outlook",
      "url": "https://...",
      "hash": "sha256:...",
      "publishedAt": "2025-10-12"
    }
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "claim-001",
      "text": "Pakistan's auto sales rose 32% year-on-year in October.",
      "sourceIds": ["src1", "src2"],
      "aiInvolved": true
    }
  ]
}

This allows downstream systems to trace each claim back to evidence.

2.3 aiInvolvement¶

{
  "used": true,
  "roles": ["drafting", "language_polish"],
  "models": [
    {
      "name": "gpt-5.1",
      "provider": "openai",
      "temperature": 0.3,
      "tools": ["browser"]
    }
  ],
  "humanEditorResponsible": "editor_123"
}

CPP requires explicit disclosure of AI participation.

2.4 integrityAttestation¶

{
  "mii": 0.973,
  "gi": 0.982,
  "ais": 0.961,
  "sentinelVerdict": "approve",
  "checkedDomains": ["facts", "hallucination"],
  "ledgerTx": "civic_ledger_tx_0xabc123",
  "signedBy": [
    "ed25519:reporter_pubkey",
    "ed25519:editor_pubkey",
    "ed25519:mobius_sentinel_pubkey"
  ]
}

• mii — Mobius Integrity Index snapshot (optional, when available)
• gi — Global Integrity score from Sentinels
• ais — Article Integrity Score from the Integrity Tier
• ledgerTx — Civic Ledger transaction id that anchors this envelope

2.5 revisionHistory¶

[
  {
    "revisionId": "v1",
    "timestamp": "2025-11-24T10:15:00Z",
    "reason": "initial publication",
    "hash": "sha256:...",
    "ledgerTx": "0x111..."
  },
  {
    "revisionId": "v2",
    "timestamp": "2025-11-25T08:41:00Z",
    "reason": "corrected GDP figure",
    "hash": "sha256:...",
    "ledgerTx": "0x222..."
  }
]

Revisions never overwrite history; they append.

2.6 signatures¶

[
  {
    "role": "newsroom",
    "publicKey": "ed25519:...",
    "signature": "base64:..."
  },
  {
    "role": "mobius_sentinel",
    "publicKey": "ed25519:mobius_pubkey",
    "signature": "base64:..."
  }
]

Signatures may be verified against the Civic Ledger or external key registries.

3. Integration with Mobius¶

• The Integrity Tier assembles an initial CPP envelope when requiredAction === "auto_publish".
• The Civic Ledger stores the envelope or its hash and returns ledgerTx.
• Downstream publishers (Substack, websites, apps) should:
• Embed a link or inline JSON for the CPP envelope.
• Optionally render a trust widget (✓, ⚠, ✗) based on AIS and GI.

4. Roadmap¶

• v0.2: Formal key registry for signers (reporters, editors, sentinels).
• v0.3: Browser extension / verifier that reads CPP and displays a trust badge.
• v0.4: Federation spec for non-Mobius newsrooms.
• v1.0: Standardization effort (IETF-style draft).