Concept 2 min
Audit Trail / Provenance
The legal-organizational version of the technical trace.
In one sentence
A record of who (human or agent) decided what, when, and based on what. It is the legal-organizational version of the technical trace, essential for compliance and accountability.
Before
Decision made by a human or agent
What it does
Who, when, based on what
After
Traceable accountability
Example
A sponsor questions information in the letter. The record shows: generated by agent v12 on March 3, based on the February 20 field report, approved by Marina during review, sent on March 5. With that, the response to the sponsor takes two minutes and has a name at every stage.
In practice
- Append-only, even for administrators.
- Also record the basis for the decision: which sources and which prompt version.
- Test by answering a real question: “why did this output come out this way?”
How to make it tangible
An immutable record of who decided what, when, and based on what.
Translated from Portuguese with AI assistance.