Evidence and Freshness Policy — v0.1

Date: 2026-08-13
Status: Draft — Contract v0.1
Owner: Tony / VeriPath
Scope: Architecture | Operations

Evidence Tiers

Tier 1 — Verified

Direct observation, owner-confirmed, or instrument-backed.

Sources include:

Business owner confirmation
Direct observation (photograph, instrument reading)
Owner-provided documentation

Tier 2 — Corroborated

Confirmed by independent sources.

Sources must be independent. Multiple extractions from the same website are same_origin, not independent.

Independent examples:

Website schema + Google Maps listing (different data pipelines)
Owner confirmation + website schema

Tier 3 — Indicative

Single source, probabilistic, or directional.

Includes:

Single website scrape
Third-party listing (Yelp, Foursquare)
AI model inference without citation

Source Independence

Two sources count as independent only if:

They originate from different data pipelines, or
One is owner-confirmed

Sources deriving from the same business input (e.g., website footer, schema, booking page) are same_origin.

Freshness Windows

Domain	Window	Auto-stale trigger
Regular fields	30 days	Not rechecked within window
Hours	7 days	Holiday periods, seasonal changes
Pricing/Services	14 days	Owner notification or observed change
Booking	7 days	Link broken or provider changed

A field transitions to stale when its freshness window expires without re-verification. A field transitions to disputed when two independent sources contradict.

Liability and Action Risk

action_risk	Agent behavior
low	Informational display
medium	Provide with timestamp and recheck notice
high	Display only; do not support transaction

GeoLocal and downstream systems are not liable for actions taken based on stale data. Transactional guarantee requires real-time re-check.

docs/architecture/canonical-business-record-v0.1.1.md
docs/decisions/2026-08-12-veripath-system-of-record-boundary.md

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