Methods, Protocols & Prompt Systems
Method profile 03 Accepted specification Interactive orientation model

ORBIT

Orientation-Based Recursive Index Tree

ORBIT specifies typed, provenance-aware orientation nodes that tell a small model, larger agent or human what a body of knowledge covers, what it excludes, how authoritative and current it is, and where attention should route next. The backend node remains complete. Each consumer receives a smaller, target-specific projection bounded by hard token gates.

01

Artefact classification

Specification acceptance, reference artefacts, experimental adoption and executable tooling are separate maturity dimensions.

Accepted contract

ORBIT Core v0.1

The normative orientation-node, graph, provenance, epistemic, invalidation, anchor, projection, budget and conformance model.

Accepted verification method

Manual Conformance

An evidence-backed, commit-bound human or human-supervised review with explicit PASS, FAIL or NOT APPLICABLE outcomes.

Separate operationalization

orbit-library

A maintained library for reusable ORBIT-structured packages and reviewed copies. It does not replace the specification or validate ORBIT Core.

02

Interactive orientation-node anatomy

Drag and select the backend contract blocks. The centre represents the complete stored node, not the smaller client projection.

03

Three separate graph planes

Toggle the planes and drag the synthetic nodes. Structural containment, attention routing and semantic association are deliberately not one generic edge type.

Planes
Structural cycles fail. The structural plane must remain a DAG. Semantic cycles are allowed. Routing cycles require an explicit later traversal process with condition checks, a visited set and a default maximum depth of three. Projection compilation itself never walks the graph.
04

Synthetic projection-compilation laboratory

Change authority, drift, anchor and budget conditions to see how a bounded client projection would be permitted or blocked. The laboratory is not an official ORBIT compiler or validator.

Synthetic contract conditions
Not evaluated

Projection result

Change the controls and evaluate the synthetic projection.

    Computed statuspending Token receipt388 / 500 
    No synthetic projection emitted yet.
    05

    Authority, invalidation and projection boundaries

    The source-truth barrier remains binding even when a node is confident, clean, highly ranked or projected successfully.

    Source-truth nodeCiteable in scopeStill carries epistemic and sync state. Source truth is not identical to freshness.
    Derived, clean nodeOrientation onlyMay route attention but may not be escalated to source truth by confidence or clean sync.
    Dirty, medium/high nodeNavigation onlyProjection can remain structurally valid while warnings require source verification.
    Critical invalidationNot safeThe projection may be well formed, but its consumer disposition is not_safe and regeneration is immediate.
    06

    Specification, dogfood and package lineage

    Drag nodes, filter maturity layers and inspect how the accepted contract relates to later experimental and operational surfaces without collapsing their authority.

    07

    Evidence and maturity receipts

    Recorded token-gate measurements are separated from maturity coding. Neither graph measures the framework's effect on task outcomes.

    Measured acceptance receipt

    Token gates under char/4

    Acceptance review receipts: Formula 1 was 950/1200, Formula 2 was 388/500 and Formula 3 was 158/500. The deterministic fallback was ceil(character count / 4).

    Status coding, not efficacy

    Specification and tooling maturity

    Core, Manual Conformance and canonical references are accepted. Dogfood and adoption are experimental. Official executable tooling remains deferred.

    12

    Promotion gates

    All passed in the recorded Phase 3 review.

    5

    Accepted decisions

    Graph capability, epistemic bifurcation, scope/routing separation, anchors and budgets.

    5

    Accepted corpus cases

    Three positive and two intentional negative manual controls.

    16

    Extended cases

    C6-C21 are experimental reference evidence, not an executable suite.

    6

    Self-orientation nodes

    Experimental derived navigation over the ORBIT repository.

    4

    Adoption profiles

    Repository orientation, agent onboarding, Personal RAG and Observation Flow.

    15

    Library YAML receipt

    Source-reported package validation at orbit-library 0.1.1.

    6

    Library nodes

    Source-reported orientation-node count in the maintained IE package.

    0

    Official runtime tools

    Validator, compiler, runtime and CI conformance remain deferred.

    08

    Evaluation interpretation

    ORBIT's source set supports a detailed mechanism and conformance contract. It does not yet support a claim of independently measured outcome improvement.

    Problem definition

    Consumers with limited attention frequently receive either too much source material or summaries that omit exclusions, authority, drift and routing. This creates both context waste and epistemic ambiguity.

    Mechanism hypothesis

    Typed orientation nodes, explicit exclusions, authority barriers, drift warnings, anchors and target-specific token gates should reduce misrouting, silent source escalation and semantic washout. This is a design hypothesis.

    Operationalization

    The accepted v0.1 contract defines backend fields, three edge planes, projection steps, three token formulas, validation phases, manual conformance and fail-loud negative controls.

    Evaluation routes

    Matched studies could measure time-to-correct-source, wrong-route rate, unsupported citation rate, anchor retention, token use, stale-node misuse, regeneration latency and operator correction effort.

    Explicit non-claims

    • ORBIT is not a runtime, retrieval engine, database, graph engine or RAG product.
    • RAG is one possible consumer and is not the framework's identity.
    • The accepted declarative schema is not an executable validator.
    • Manual Conformance is not automated certification.
    • A successfully compiled projection does not make a derived node source truth.
    • A structurally valid projection may still carry a not_safe consumer disposition.
    • The repository-integrity workflow does not validate ORBIT conformance.
    • The orbit-library consistency script does not certify ORBIT Core conformance.
    • No independent effect study was identified in the inspected source set.
    09

    Representative adoption surfaces

    Examples are classified by their source status and do not create additional core requirements.

    Agent onboardingWake-up sequence, mandatory reads, lane identity, mutation boundaries and completion receipts. Personal RAG orientationCorpus classes, retrieval modes, authority floor, time window and citation requirements. Repository orientationCanonical entry points, active work surfaces, adjacency and mutation-policy routing. Observation FlowCapture candidates, possible capabilities and outputs while preserving action_authorized as false. orbit-library IE packageMaintained reusable instructions with local-overlay ownership and target-repository authority. 5PPA separate bounded-work protocol that may govern implementation work around ORBIT without becoming part of ORBIT Core.
    10

    Sources and reproducibility notes

    Claims are bounded to the inspected pins and status authority below.

    Accepted specification pinfbratten/recursive-orientation-index-framework @ 8927506cb3ede033cd92c0277bd7ca3f2fbc4273
    Status authoritySPEC-STATUS.md
    Core mechanism sourcesCONCEPT.md, NODE-SCHEMA.md, GRAPH-MODEL.md, PROVENANCE-MODEL.md, EPISTEMIC-MODEL.md, INVALIDATION-MODEL.md, ANCHOR-INVARIANT.md
    Projection and gatesCONSUMER-PROJECTION-MODEL.md, PROJECTION-EMISSION-CONTRACT.md, TOKEN-BUDGET.md, VALIDATION-RULES.md
    Acceptance evidencedocs/governance/ORBIT-v0.1-ACCEPTANCE-REVIEW.md
    Accepted reference contractschemas/orientation-node.schema.yaml
    Experimental evidenceorbit/root-index.yaml, examples/adoption/profiles.yaml, docs/governance/EXTENDED-CONFORMANCE-CORPUS.md
    Operational package pinfbratten/orbit-library @ e95bdeb18c035527a676c838f7c3f97e964fd385
    Publication surfacefbratten.github.io/methods/orbit/

    The page uses only synthetic browser state. It performs no validation, compilation, repository mutation, live graph traversal, source retrieval or LLM operation.