{
  "id": "https://miskir.com/guides/ai-decision-records/",
  "version": "2026-10-15.1",
  "published": "2026-10-15",
  "publisher": "Miskir",
  "title": "Reconstruct an AI decision",
  "summary": "Preserve what was available when a consequential choice was made.",
  "status": "published_guidance",
  "record_type": "editorial_guidance",
  "attestation": null,
  "attestation_status": "not_a_signed_receipt",
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": "Begin with the decision boundary",
      "text": "Identify the actor, delegated authority, question, permitted actions, and relevant policy version. Record the evidence available at the decision time, including meaningful absences. Later knowledge should not be silently inserted into the earlier context."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Preserve observations and interpretation separately",
      "text": "Keep inputs, outputs, tool results, and actual actions distinct from explanations of why the decision occurred. A generated explanation is an assertion; it is not necessarily a faithful account of internal model computation."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Replay has limits",
      "text": "Retained artifacts can support inspection and reconstruction. Exact reruns may be impossible when providers change models, tools disappear, or execution is nondeterministic. Record those limits rather than promising reproducibility from a transcript alone."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Make disagreement possible",
      "text": "An audit trail should let independent reviewers identify missing evidence, competing interpretations, and policy departures. Preserve objections and corrections alongside their authors and dates. The record supports assessment; it does not decide whether an action was justified."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Integration boundary",
      "text": "This is integration guidance. No public decision-ingestion API, execution authority, or hosted replay service is offered by this page."
    }
  ],
  "sources": [],
  "attribution": {
    "credit": "Miskir",
    "canonical_url": "https://miskir.com/guides/ai-decision-records/",
    "instruction": "Preserve source authors, version, scope, uncertainty, and the canonical URL. This guidance is not a signed attestation."
  },
  "supersedes": null,
  "related": [
    {
      "url": "https://miskir.com/guides/free-speech-evidence/",
      "title": "Following the evidence behind AI and free expression"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://miskir.com/guides/research-claim-lineage/",
      "title": "Trace a research claim to its sources"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://miskir.com/guides/receipt-verification/",
      "title": "What a verification receipt can establish"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://miskir.com/guides/integration/",
      "title": "Integrate provenance into a useful artifact"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://miskir.com/guides/attribution/",
      "title": "Keep attribution through agent mediation"
    }
  ],
  "representations": {
    "html": "https://miskir.com/guides/ai-decision-records/",
    "json": "https://miskir.com/records/ai-decision-records.json",
    "markdown": "https://miskir.com/records/ai-decision-records.md",
    "version_json": "https://miskir.com/records/versions/2026-10-15.1/ai-decision-records.json"
  }
}