C²

Conformance levels

Three levels that make compliance measurable, not self-reported. A practitioner or system meets a level — or doesn't. Each level has specific, testable conditions.

L1 — Foundation

“The floor”

The five gates are honored. The minimum conditions for trust are met. L1 is the entry point — genuinely useful, not a checkbox on the way to L2.

✓Work products are explained (Gate 1 satisfied)

✓Attribution and AI disclosure are present (Gate 2 satisfied)

✓A decision trail exists and is retrievable (Gate 3 satisfied)

✓Critical risks are resolved or formally accepted (Gate 4 satisfied)

✓Validation status is visible (Gate 5 satisfied)

L2 — Standard

“The working tier”

The governance trail is professional-grade. The work product could survive a handoff, an audit, or a change in personnel without loss of context.

✓All L1 requirements

✓Evidence is structured and complete (not ad hoc notes)

✓Decision trail is intact across the full lifecycle

✓Domain-appropriate review has been applied

✓Context chain is navigable — a successor can reconstruct history from evidence alone

L3 — Advanced

“Maximum assurance”

The governance trail is auditable by external parties with high confidence. Provenance cannot be forged. Evidence cannot be altered after the fact.

✓All L2 requirements

✓Provenance is cryptographically verifiable (signed, not just attributed)

✓Evidence is immutable (stored in a system that prevents retroactive modification)

✓High-stakes work products require explicit approval from a designated authority

A feature flag toggle at L1 satisfies all gates in minutes. An auth rewrite at L3 takes an hour of governance. Governance is proportional to consequences — the depth scales with the stakes, not the level.

Conformance by domain

How each requirement maps in the current vocabulary profile.

Requirement	Universal
Gate 1 artifact	Explanation document
Gate 2 evidence	Provenance record
Gate 3 location	System of record
L2 review	Peer review
L3 approval	Designated authority

Switch domain profile to see how requirements map to a specific field.

Each level has both a human-only path and a tool-augmented path — human-only review is a designed operating mode, not a workaround. Tool augmentation makes governance faster and more consistent. It is never a prerequisite.