The Attestor Entry Model defines the complete conceptual structure of an Attestation and a Trust Statement, and the governed relationship between the assertion being evaluated and the conclusion Attestor produces.
The model establishes the conceptual requirements and authority boundaries that the rest of Attestor architecture formalizes through identifiers, controlled values, schemas and profiles, lifecycle and versioning, Validation, Conformance, Publication, Methodology, and Production.
An Attestation is a governed, attributable assertion presented for an Attestor purpose. It identifies the subject, assertion, scope, Attesting Authority, supporting references, provenance, relevant context, and limitations necessary for evaluation. It is not Attestor's final trust conclusion.
A Trust Statement is Attestor's canonical evaluated conclusion: a governed, attributable, bounded conclusion produced through rule-constrained evaluation of an Attestation and its eligible governed inputs. Its authority is limited to Attestor's conclusion within the statement's defined scope.
Every Attestation preserves the identity and authority context of the party or governed source responsible for the assertion. Attestor may evaluate that assertion without assuming the authority of the attesting party or referenced objects.
The subject identifies what the Attestation and resulting evaluation concern. Referencing a subject does not transfer ownership or canonical authority to Attestor.
The assertion is the bounded proposition presented for evaluation. It remains distinct from supporting evidence and from the Trust Statement that may result.
Scope constrains interpretation by identifying the relevant subject, question, conditions, time or state, and limitations needed to prevent a bounded conclusion from being treated as universal.
Evidence and governed references provide the basis Attestor may use during evaluation. They retain their source meaning, status, provenance, and authority. Their presence does not automatically establish correctness, sufficiency, verification, certification, or a favorable Trust Statement.
Provenance preserves where assertions, evidence, references, and evaluation inputs came from and how they entered the Attestor process. A Trust Statement remains traceable to the governed basis on which its conclusion was produced.
Known limitations, unresolved conditions, conflicting information, uncertainty, and other material constraints remain visible where they affect interpretation.
An evaluation may depend on the state of a source, subject, or condition at a particular time. The Entry Model preserves enough temporal and state context to distinguish the basis evaluated from later changes.
At the conceptual level, an Attestation must preserve the information necessary to identify the assertion, attribute it, bound it, and connect it to its governed basis. This page does not prescribe machine field names or serialization.
A Trust Statement preserves both Attestor's conclusion and the governed basis that makes the conclusion reviewable. It is a distinct Attestor-owned object rather than a renamed Attestation or a copy of the source material evaluated.
The Entry Model preserves a deliberate separation between what is presented to Attestor and what Attestor concludes. An Attestation carries an attributable assertion. Evaluation tests that assertion and its eligible governed basis under Attestor rules. The resulting Trust Statement records Attestor's bounded conclusion.
The Entry Model does not collapse source authority into Attestor authority. Atlas, Navigator, Certifier, Registry, Chronicle, Anchor, Beacon, and attributable external sources remain authoritative for their own governed objects and responsibilities. Attestor is authoritative for its own governed Attestations, its institutional evaluation process and resulting conclusions, and its Trust Statements, but reference alone does not make Attestor authoritative over a referenced source object.
The foundational relationship is directional. Eligible governed inputs form the governed basis available to an Attestation and its evaluation; an Attestation enters rule-constrained evaluation; and evaluation may produce a Trust Statement. A Trust Statement remains traceable backward to its Attestation and governed basis without converting references into support claims or Attestor-owned source records.
The first controlled production operation exercised the Entry Model end to end. A bounded verification-related Attestation was canonically created as ATT-2026-0001, evaluated against six eligible governed source inputs through an established Evaluation Basis and Rule-Constrained Evaluation, and produced the bounded Trust Statement TRST-2026-0001.
The operation preserved the distinction between assertion, evidence/reference, evaluation outcome, and Trust Statement. The final Trust Statement did not become a certification, a universal truth claim, or a transfer of authority from any referenced Suite institution.
The production operation demonstrated that Attestation and Trust Statement are distinct canonical object classes rather than different labels for the same record. Their identifiers, institutional meanings, and relationships remained separate throughout creation, evaluation, activation, and publication.
This Entry Model establishes conceptual object structure rather than duplicating the normative detail governed by Attestor's dedicated architecture. Identifiers, controlled vocabularies, formal Attestation Types, Authority, Provenance, Eligibility, Evaluation, Relationships, Lifecycle, Versioning, Validation, Conformance, Publication, Methodology, and Production are established by their respective pages. Schemas and Validation govern applicable executable representation and machine requirements; implementation-specific mechanics remain subordinate to those contracts.
The Entry Model is established and has been exercised end to end in production. The first controlled operation demonstrated the canonical distinction between Attestation and Trust Statement, the intervening institutional act of Rule-Constrained Evaluation, bounded scope and limitations, attributable authority, governed provenance, and traceability across the complete Attestor flow.
Production proof establishes the Entry Model for the object classes and flow actually exercised. It does not imply that every Attestation Type, every possible source class, or every future evaluation path has been independently production-tested.
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