Lexicon · governance

Attestation

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

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.