CA-Canon

CA-Canon is an open protocol for publishing anchor-bound, machine-retrievable assertions.
It does not establish truth, authority, or correctness.
It declares bindings between claims and external records that can be independently verified.
Each claim is linked to an Anchor - a third-party resource accessible without operator mediation.
This relationship is expressed as a static artifact and committed via cryptographic hashing.
All artifacts are deterministically served, ensuring identical retrieval across all user agents.

Sub Heading

CA-Canon reduces the computational effort required for automated systems to:

• confirm that an entity exists

• confirm that a claim references an external record

• confirm that a retrieved artifact matches a previously published or externally anchored hash

It does not make claims more correct.
It reduces the effort required for a system to include a claim.

Query adaptation occurs at retrieval time by the consuming system.
CA-Canon artifacts remain static.

CA-Canon defines three primitives:

Anchor
An externally hosted, independently retrievable resource identified by a stable locator (URL or equivalent identifier).
Authority is external and query-dependent.

Binding
A structured, machine-readable mapping between a claim and its anchor.
Bindings must conform to a defined schema (see specification).

Commitment
A cryptographic hash (SHA-256) of the full artifact containing the binding.
Any modification produces divergence relative to a known reference hash.

Tamper detection requires comparison against a previously published or externally anchored hash.

CA-Canon reduces the computational effort required for automated systems to:

• confirm that an entity exists

• confirm that a claim references an external record

• confirm that a retrieved artifact matches a previously published or externally anchored hash

It does not make claims more correct.
It reduces the effort required for a system to include a claim.

Query adaptation occurs at retrieval time by the consuming system.
CA-Canon artifacts remain static.

All CA-Canon artifacts must satisfy:

• HTTP 200

• static payloads only

• byte-identical responses across all user agents

• no redirects

• no dynamic rendering

Static means identical bytes regardless of user agent, time, or request path.

Verification Model

CA-Canon publishes declarations.
Verification is performed by the consuming system.

Verification process:

• retrieve the artifact

• recompute its hash

• compare against a known reference (local or external)

Without a reference hash, tamper detection is not possible.

CA-Canon does not verify semantic correctness or anchor relevance.

CA-Canon guarantees:

• deterministic retrieval

• explicit claim-to-anchor binding

• hash-committed artifacts

CA-Canon does not guarantee:

• correctness of claims

• relevance of anchors

• authority ranking

• inclusion in model outputs

• persistence or availability of anchors

Relevance and applicability are resolved by the consuming system.

The Problem

The web optimizes for visibility, not verifiability.

Content is structured for ranking systems and human interpretation.
Automated systems can read content but cannot reliably determine whether a claim references an external record without incurring verification cost.

As a result, inclusion is constrained by:

• uncertainty about existence

• uncertainty about external reference

• cost of validation

CA-Canon restructures claims into a deterministic, machine-readable surface.

By binding claims to external anchors and exposing them through static, hash-committed artifacts, the protocol reduces the effort required for a system to verify:

• existence

• external reference

• artifact integrity (relative to a known hash)

This reduces verification overhead.

Anchors activate conditionally based on query type:

• discovery queries → reputation anchors may be sufficient

• verification queries → institutional anchors may be required

CA-Canon does not rank or evaluate anchors.
It exposes them in a form that can be processed with minimal ambiguity.

Valid deployments must meet the following conditions:

• artifacts located at: /.well-known/ca-canon/

• static file serving only

• no user-agent variance

• no runtime mutation

• append-only artifact history

Bindings must be expressed as structured mappings between claims and anchors conforming to a defined schema.

Supersession is handled by publishing new artifacts.
Prior artifacts remain available for audit.

Implementation

Open Access:
Any operator with control over domain and hosting can implement the protocol.
Managed Tier:
A licensed tier may provide installation, validation, and monitoring.
Resources:
Spec: https://github.com/ca-canon​
Validation: [validator URL]