Abstract
This publication discloses methods and systems for formal specification verification and specification-declared completeness verification applied to organisational decision questions. A specification declaring its own structural and governance requirements defines what data is needed, what outputs must be produced, what conditions determine whether the question was adequately answered, and how the question should be evaluated. A verification process distinguishes structural validity — whether a decision record conforms to the declared input and output requirements — from substantive completeness — whether the decision was adequately resolved according to declared completeness conditions. In one embodiment, the specification designates an evaluation pathway indicating how the decision should be evaluated, and a decision verification pipeline applies sequential stages of increasing rigour to determine whether a sealed decision record satisfies the governing specification. Completeness attestation — an integrity-protected record of which declared completeness conditions were checked and the results of each check — enables external systems to confirm that a decision record satisfies its specification without re- evaluation. In one embodiment, a structured decomposition of reasoning steps connects multiple specifications through declared data flow connections, and pre- execution structural validation verifies data contract compatibility, evaluation pathway consistency, and declared authorization requirements across the connected specifications before any evaluation occurs. The disclosed pre-execution structural validation checks specification-declared interface contracts for data compatibility across multi-step decision processes, preventing runtime failures from unvalidated step dependencies in decision governance systems. The disclosed approaches address the gap between existing specification-based validation — which confirms that records have the correct shape — and governance-level decision verification (including proof of compliance for regulatory compliance verification) — which confirms that the decision question was adequately answered under appropriate conditions.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Winchester, Jayson, "Formal Specification Verification for Decision Record Completeness — Pre-Execution Contract Validation", Technical Disclosure Commons, (February 19, 2026)
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/9342