Annex A: Canonical Definitions

This annex provides an extended glossary of terms used throughout ARCS. For normative definitions, see Section 3. This annex is informative.

Core Record Concepts

Interaction Record — Any artifact created, retained, transmitted, or derived by an automated system during or as a result of human-directed use, including artifacts held by the operator or by any vendor within the custody surface.

Deliberative Record — An interaction record that captures the reasoning process, intent, or decision-making sequence of the operator or user, as distinguished from final outputs or operational telemetry.

Derived Record — Any artifact created outside the primary system as a result of an interaction, including copied text, downloaded files, generated documents, stored notes, and database entries.

Intermediate Record — Artifacts created during system processing but not directly visible to the user, including agent traces, tool call logs, retrieval queries, and runtime state.

Material Record — Any interaction record reasonably likely to be relevant in discovery, audit, or governance review.

Surface Concepts

Custody Surface — The complete set of systems, vendors, and storage locations where copies of interaction records may exist.

Discovery Surface — The subset of the record surface reasonably susceptible to legal production.

Review Surface — The set of systems in which interaction records may be accessed by humans other than the user.

Unknown Surface — Any portion of the record or custody surface that cannot be conclusively documented.

Lifecycle Concepts

Default Retention Posture — The record categories, retention durations, and deletion behaviors that apply in ordinary system operation, in the absence of any preservation obligation.

Preservation Posture — The operational state that applies when litigation is pending or anticipated, a preservation demand has been received, or an investigation has been opened.

Non-Creation — An architectural condition in which a specific category of interaction record is not created, as distinguished from creation followed by deletion.