Certification and Verification
The final stage of the PRISM pipeline is Certify: every resolution result must be attested with a machine-verifiable certificate before it leaves the pipeline. The UOR Certificates namespace encodes this attestation layer.
Why Certificates?
A resolution that computes a correct answer but cannot prove it is incomplete. The UOR framework treats proof and computation as inseparable — the Certificate class is the root of a hierarchy of typed attestations, each tied to a specific algebraic property.
Certificate Hierarchy
Certificates are not generic. Each subclass targets a distinct invariant:
- TransformCertificate — attests that a morphism preserves the claimed structure.
- IsometryCertificate — attests metric preservation under a transform.
- CompletenessCertificate — attests that a type satisfies the completeness criterion (identity IT_7d).
- GroundingCertificate — attests that a context has reached full grounding (all sites pinned).
- GeodesicCertificate — attests that a geodesic trace satisfies both GD_1 conditions.
- MeasurementCertificate — attests that a measurement event respected the von Neumann–Landauer bridge.
Audit Trails
For complex verifications the framework records step-by-step provenance. The CompletenessAuditTrail collects an ordered sequence of completeness witnesses, and the ChainAuditTrail records per-step evidence for lift-chain certificates that span multiple Witt levels.
Connecting to Proofs
Certificates are the output of the Proofs, Derivations & Traces. A ComputationCertificate verifies an identity at a specific Witt level, while an AxiomaticDerivation establishes universal scope. The cert namespace consumes these proofs and packages them as self-contained attestations that downstream systems can verify independently.