01 — Overview

What Is Triage

Triage is the cognitive intake and classification boundary between incoming evidence/AI output and the governed organizational-memory promotion path.

Triage is:

• the classifier — it determines what something is
• the linker — it connects evidence to known entities
• the stager — it prepares candidates for human review
• the gatekeeper — it blocks low-quality or conflicting material

Triage is NOT:

• the owner of canonical truth
• a canonical writer
• an authority grantor
• a promotion engine

Why Triage Exists

Without triage, every AI output, every conversation, every connector event would flow directly into organizational memory. The result would be noise — duplicates, conflicts, stale data, low-confidence claims all treated as truth.

Triage exists to:

1. Filter — reject spam, low-confidence, and irrelevant material
2. Classify — categorize evidence by type, domain, and sensitivity
3. Link — connect new evidence to existing entities and work
4. Deduplicate — identify conflicts with canonical truth
5. Stage — prepare candidates for governed human review
6. Audit — emit a durable trail of every classification decision

The Canonical Law

Triage classifies. Governance decides. The Pipeline promotes. Spine owns organizational memory. Twin consumes the governed result.

This sentence defines the four responsibilities:

Responsibility	Owner	What It Does
Classify	Triage	Determines what the evidence is, links it, evaluates quality
Decide	Governance (Human)	Approves, rejects, or defers the candidate
Promote	Pipeline	Writes approved candidates to canonical organizational memory
Own	Spine	Stores and serves organizational memory as governed truth

Triage and the Two-Path Architecture

Triage operates at the boundary between the User Path (human experience) and the System Path (operational pipeline).

System Path — Where Triage Runs

On the System Path, triage is the classification and staging phase of the pipeline:

Intake → Load → Normalize → Resolve Identity → Thread Events → Triage → Contextualize → Project → OODA → Governance → Execute → Reconcile

The System Path handles the mechanical work:

• Classifying incoming evidence by type, domain, and sensitivity
• Linking evidence to canonical entities
• Deduplicating against existing memory
• Staging candidates for human review
• Emitting audit trails

User Path — Where Triage Is Decided

On the User Path, triage is the governance touchpoint. The human sees candidates in the Triage Inbox and decides:

Enter → Discover → Understand → Contextualize → DECIDE (approve/reject/defer) → Act → Review → Continue

The User Path handles the human judgment:

• Reviewing candidates with full context
• Approving, rejecting, or deferring
• Seeing the impact of decisions on organizational memory
• Moving on with continuity intact

The Boundary

Triage is the handoff point between paths:

Path	Triage Role	What Happens
System Path	Classifier + Stager	Mechanical: classify, link, dedup, stage, audit
User Path	Governance Touchpoint	Human: review, decide, approve/reject/defer
Both	Boundary	Candidates flow from System to User; decisions flow from User to System

The System Path never writes canonical memory. The User Path never classifies. Neither path can bypass the other.

Relationship to Flow C

Triage is the intake boundary for Flow C — the AI reasoning pipeline. Flow C NEVER writes directly to Spine. All AI-generated content goes through:

AI Source → Triage (System Path) → Staging → Governance Review (User Path) → Promotion → Org Memory

Memory Scopes

Triage operates at the boundary between evidence and truth:

Scope	What It Is	Triage's Role
Personal	Private user memory	Never triaged — owner-controlled
Conversational	Session/thread working memory	Evidence source for triage
Agent	Agent/Twin working memory	Evidence source for triage
Organizational staging	Candidate for org memory	Triage writes here
Organizational published	Approved tenant-wide truth	Pipeline writes here (never triage)

Key Principle

AI may propose organizational memory; only the governed promotion path can publish it.

High confidence does not authorize promotion. Confidence describes evidence quality — it is an input to human judgement, never a substitute for it.