Methodology establishes Attestor's complete repeatable institutional process—from a bounded trust-relevant purpose through governed assertion, input eligibility, Rule-Constrained Evaluation, Trust Statement formation, and continuing governance.
The methodology turns Attestor's architecture into a disciplined sequence while preserving attribution, provenance, scope, uncertainty, institutional authority, and historical state at every material step.
Methodology establishes Attestor's complete repeatable institutional process: how a trust-relevant matter moves from defined purpose and governed inputs through Attestation, eligibility, evaluation, Trust Statement formation, review, lifecycle governance, and—when authorized—publication.
The methodology governs Attestor activity only. It may consume or reference canonical Suite and external objects, but it does not perform another institution's canonical responsibility or convert source authority into Attestor authority.
Every Attestor operation begins by establishing the evaluation purpose, identifying the subject, and defining the trust-relevant question or assertion context. The process must be bounded before evidence or sources are interpreted.
The Attestation is formed as a governed attributable assertion with subject, assertion, scope, Attesting Authority, provenance, and governed references. Inputs are not silently converted into conclusions.
Potential inputs are evaluated for admission into the specific evaluation basis. Availability, authority, and reference alone do not establish eligibility. Material exclusions remain reviewable where required.
Eligible governed inputs are evaluated under applicable Attestor rules. Supporting, limiting, conflicting, contradictory, and uncertain material must be considered without hidden weighting or automatic source conversion.
The evaluation produces a bounded Attestor conclusion carried by a canonical Trust Statement. The Trust Statement preserves its supporting Attestation(s), evaluation basis, provenance, relevant state, limitations, and relationships.
After creation, Attestor applies validation, review, lifecycle, versioning, conformance, and publication governance as applicable. Later material change can trigger review without silently rewriting the historical evaluation.
The Attestor methodology is organized as a repeatable governed sequence. Individual profiles may add requirements, but they must preserve this institutional logic unless later architecture explicitly establishes a bounded exception.
Attestor begins with a bounded institutional purpose, not with a desired conclusion. The subject, question, assertion context, scope, relevant time/state, and known limitations must be sufficiently defined to make later eligibility and evaluation meaningful.
The governed assertion is expressed through an Attestation. Formation preserves who or what stands behind the assertion, what is asserted, the subject and scope, provenance, evidence/source references, relevant state, limitations, and relationships required by the applicable profile.
Attestor identifies potential inputs and determines which may legitimately enter this particular evaluation. Eligibility remains contextual. Material exclusions must not be based merely on whether an input favors or disfavors the assertion.
The evaluation basis is the governed set of eligible inputs, source/provenance context, applicable rules, scope, relevant state, and material exclusions necessary to understand what Attestor actually evaluated.
Attestor evaluates the Attestation against the governed evaluation basis. The process must consider material supporting, limiting, conflicting, and contradictory information and preserve uncertainty rather than forcing a favorable or binary result.
The evaluation outcome informs a bounded Attestor conclusion. That conclusion becomes the substantive core of a canonical Trust Statement, which preserves enough context to remain attributable, traceable, reviewable, and historically interpretable.
The resulting Attestor objects must satisfy applicable normative structural and rule requirements. Validation tests the object against adopted architecture; review considers whether the object and process are ready for the next governed action.
Attestor establishes the object's governed lifecycle state and preserves version identity. Where a conformance claim is applicable, the target is assessed only against its declared requirements set and tested scope.
Publication occurs only when Attestor affirmatively authorizes a governed public representation. Publication is downstream of canonical creation and remains distinct from lifecycle, validation, conformance, and evaluation outcome.
Attestor's responsibility does not end at publication. Material new evidence, changed source state, authority changes, provenance defects, corrections, contradictions, scope changes, or applicable rule changes may trigger review. Historical evaluation context must not be silently replaced by current source state.
The first controlled production operation exercised the standing methodology against a real governed matter concerning SC-CERT-2026-0001. The operation confirmed the method's core sequence while also demonstrating the downstream governance required after Trust Statement formation.
The production run therefore demonstrated that the standing methodology and the actual governed operation agree in substance. The twenty-step institutional sequence remains the durable method; production may represent those steps through separate records and control points without changing their institutional meaning.
A repeatable process must be reviewable. Attestor should preserve enough governed context to reconstruct what was asserted, what was eligible, what was evaluated, which rules applied, what conclusion was reached, and how the resulting object moved through later governance.
The methodology may use Suite and external objects as eligible governed inputs without absorbing their authority. Attestor evaluates and concludes under Attestor authority; source institutions remain authoritative for their own canonical objects.
Repeatability requires consistent governed steps, not an invented universal scoring formula. Different Attestation profiles may require different evidence, rules, or review depth while remaining conformant to the same institutional methodology.
Methodology defines how Attestor operates. It does not guarantee a favorable conclusion, universal truth, source correctness, permanent currency, publication, or authority beyond Attestor's institutional boundary.
The Methodology architecture assembles Attestor's governed components into one repeatable end-to-end institutional process and has now been exercised through the first controlled production operation. The production sequence confirmed rather than displaced the standing method.
Production proof establishes that the method can govern a real Attestor operation. It does not guarantee the result of a future evaluation or pre-satisfy any future Eligibility, Validation, Review, Conformance, lifecycle, or Publication requirement.
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