The Authority & Reference Model defines precisely what Beacon owns, what Beacon may reference, what authority remains with other Suite institutions and external sources, and what Beacon must never claim merely because it discovered or referenced information.
The model answers:
A Beacon Discovery Signal may point to an authoritative object without becoming that object and without acquiring the originating institution's authority.
Beacon owns the objects and institutional determinations that belong to its Discovery & Signals responsibility.
Beacon does not acquire ownership of:
Beacon owns the fact that its Discovery Signal contains a reference. It does not own the referenced object.
| Institution | Institution-Owned Responsibility / Object | Beacon May | Beacon May Not |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atlas | Authoritative Intelligence | Discover, reference, attribute, preserve discovery context | Replace or recreate Atlas authority |
| Certifier | Certification Package | Reference certification information and identifiers | Certify merely by discovery |
| Registry | SREG | Reference registered records and source-owned status | Register or alter Registry standing |
| Chronicle | Chronicle Entry | Reference qualifying preserved historical objects | Determine Chronicle preservation authority |
| Anchor | Integrity Reference | Reference integrity objects and attributable results | Perform or claim Anchor authority by reference |
| Beacon | Discovery Signal / Metadata | Create, validate, version, publish, supersede, resolve, withdraw its own signals | Use discovery to absorb another institution's authority |
| Attestor | Trust Statement | Reference a Trust Statement | Convert a Trust Signal into a Trust Statement |
| Navigator | Workflow Definition / Orchestration | Participate in and reference Navigator-directed workflows | Redefine Navigator workflow authority |
Beacon may create a Jurisdiction or Information Discovery Signal based on Atlas Authoritative Intelligence.
Beacon does not make Atlas intelligence authoritative. Atlas supplies that authority within its own institutional role.
Beacon may discover and reference a Certification Package, including through a Certification Signal.
The existence of a Beacon Certification Signal does not independently certify the subject.
Beacon may discover an SREG and preserve its identifier, relationship, and source-attributed status.
Beacon cannot create Registry standing or change an SREG lifecycle by referencing it.
Beacon may discover and reference a Chronicle Entry.
Discovery does not itself establish Chronicle Preservation Eligibility or historical institutional standing.
Beacon may reference an Anchor Integrity Reference and preserve the provenance of that observation.
Beacon does not perform Anchor's integrity function merely by discovering its output.
Beacon may discover and reference an Attestor Trust Statement.
Beacon's discovery classification must never be interpreted as a substitute trust determination.
Beacon may operate within a Navigator-directed workflow and preserve the workflow reference as context or provenance.
External sources retain their own identity, provenance, authorship, status, and whatever authority they legitimately possess outside the Suite.
Beacon may attribute an external source. It must not imply that inclusion converts the source into a Suite-authoritative object.
Referenced objects retain their native identifiers.
A reference should never rename ANCH-2026-0001 as though it were a Beacon object.
Beacon should preserve the source object's actual institutional type when known.
These fields are related, but they are not interchangeable.
When Beacon repeats or exposes an institution-owned determination, the determination should remain attributable to that institution.
Beacon may report what the source says. It must distinguish that from what Beacon itself determines.
Beacon may determine matters within its own institutional domain, including:
Beacon must attribute determinations owned elsewhere, including:
A Beacon reference means that the source or object is relevant to the discovery represented by the signal.
It does not automatically mean Beacon:
Beacon can accurately record that a source made an assertion even if that assertion later proves incorrect.
Beacon Validation tests whether the Discovery Signal conforms to Beacon production rules.
A production reference should preserve, when applicable:
Beacon should not copy another institution's canonical object into a Beacon structure and then treat the copy as independently authoritative.
Information must not gain an appearance of greater institutional authority merely because Beacon discovered, indexed, published, or linked to it.
Beacon may preserve external information as discovery evidence or context while clearly distinguishing it from Suite-owned canonical authority.
If later Suite institutions certify, register, chronicle, anchor, or attest something related to that source, those are separate institutional actions producing separate institution-owned objects.
If a referenced source changes status, content, location, or availability, Beacon may record the new observation.
Loss of source availability does not automatically erase a Discovery Signal or its historical provenance.
This is an architectural representation, not a frozen machine-readable property model.
Authority tells Beacon whose determination it is. Provenance tells Beacon how the referenced information was observed.
The Authority Model establishes who owns the endpoints. The next Relationship Model will define how Beacon represents governed connections between them.