How the trace works

The six phases below are a derived reading of the case. Authority sits with the Project Shadow R1.0.1 registry: 26 canonical states and 71 guarded transitions, entry at RECEIVED. The exact state is always visible next to the phase, and the phases are never used as a progress bar over those states.

1. Phase 01

   Signal

   Something happened. Record it before anyone explains it away.

   • A record opens at RECEIVED before anyone has decided what it means.
   • Intake captures what happened, who noticed, and what is affected — separately from any explanation of why.
2. Phase 02

   Contain

   Stop the bleeding without pretending that is the fix.

   • Containment work is recorded as a subrecord while the lifecycle stays in assessment. Stopping harm is not the same as fixing the cause, so it does not advance the case.
   • If a case genuinely enters the canonical CONTAINED state after a failed execution, it leaves only through the registry's allowed branches — never by jumping back to triage.
3. Phase 03

   Investigate

   Separate what is known from what is inferred from what is UNKNOWN.

   • Claims are atomic and typed: fact, inference, speculation, contradiction, UNKNOWN. Each links to an exact source span.
   • Causal hypotheses carry a status — proposed, supported, refuted or unknown — and their supporting and refuting evidence. Inconclusive evidence stays inconclusive instead of being resolved into 'operator error'.
4. Phase 04

   Correct

   Name the action by its downstream effect, not its paperwork.

   • An action is named by its downstream effect and its recognition check, not by its paperwork.
   • The decision draft is sealed byte-for-byte before approval. Any material edit creates a successor version and voids every approval bound to the previous one.
5. Phase 05

   Verify

   An independent party checks whether the defect actually stopped.

   • The effectiveness plan is sealed before implementation completes: metric, baseline, threshold, sample, window, evidence requirement, failure rule and an eligible distinct verifier.
   • A NOT_EFFECTIVE or INDETERMINATE result blocks closure. It does not silently reopen the case either — a person with standing files the challenge, or an authorized owner opens a linked successor CAPA.
6. Phase 06

   Remember

   History is append-only. Rectification never becomes a memory hole.

   • Content history and lifecycle history are two separate tracks. Editing a note never fabricates a state transition.
   • Any record can be read as of an exact sequence or moment, with the semantic bundle that was in force at the time.