# Attestation

> External or human verification treated as a first-class evidence mode.

Category: governance

Attestation is a signed statement from a witness that something is true, treated as real evidence rather than a verbal aside.

## Why it matters
Not everything can be proven by an automated check. Some claims need a witness: a human who reviewed it, a third party who confirmed it, an expert who saw the work. If that verification lives only in someone's memory, it is not proof. Attestation puts the witness into the record.

## In practice
Alongside automated evidence like traces and evals, you capture attestations: who verified, what they checked, and when. It becomes a node in the proof chain, not a comment in a thread.

## Where it shows up in my work
agentic-u uses attestation as a validation channel alongside artifacts and tracked progress. In governance terms it covers the gap automated checks cannot reach.

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Source: https://ryanhunter.io/lexicon/attestation
Part of the Agent Infrastructure Lexicon by Ryan Hunter. https://ryanhunter.io/lexicon