Reversible structural decisions
Operator Library
Use Add, Split, Merge, Retire, and No-Op as inspectable decision labels. Reward justified work and safe refusal rather than action for its own sake.
Decision posture
An operator names a proposal; it does not grant authority.
Operator receipts make structural changes reviewable by recording what was proposed, which alternatives were considered, what evidence and constraints applied, who reviewed the decision, and how rollback or repair works.
VNWO publishes the vocabulary and templates only. The implementing organization remains responsible for authorization, execution, security, legal review, and actual rollback behavior.
Library
Five decisions with different evidence burdens.
| Operator | Meaning | Evidence to publish | Must not imply |
|---|---|---|---|
Add | Introduce a new node, rule, memory class, category, endpoint boundary, or review obligation. | Need, source, expected benefit, maintenance cost, reviewer, and exit impact. | That the addition is safe, authorized, or permanent. |
Split | Separate an overloaded or ambiguous thing into two bounded things. | Confusion or collision evidence, new boundaries, migration plan, and provenance preservation. | That separation resolves every conflict or legal obligation. |
Merge | Combine genuinely redundant or equivalent things. | Equivalence evidence, retained provenance, redirect plan, and dissent or rollback path. | That similar labels prove identical authority or meaning. |
Retire | Deprecate a stale node, rule, artifact, alias, or workflow. | Reason, replacement, archive, redirect, affected users, repair path, and retention decision. | That historical evidence may be silently deleted. |
No-Op | Explicitly preserve state because action or claim widening is not justified. | Evidence gap, authority ambiguity, resource or review limit, safe alternative, and reconsideration trigger. | That inaction is automatically neutral or excuses a required human response. |
Review flow
Proposal → evidence → constraint → decision → review.
- State the requested operator and affected nodes or artifacts.
- List source evidence, alternatives, dependencies, costs, and uncertainty.
- Check authority, consent, memory, endpoint, maintenance, review, repair, and exit constraints.
- Select the operator—or No-Op—and record a concise reason.
- Name the reviewer, effective time, rollback trigger, and follow-up evidence.