Evidence and Proof · Lesson 01 of 04
Receipts and archives
Receipts are typed, producer-bounded evidence; archives preserve identity-bound history without expanding what the evidence proves.
Learning objectives
- Describe the structure of a receipt
- Explain what archive identity can detect and what mutable local storage cannot authenticate
- Identify what belongs in an archive vs a receipt
Prerequisites
Receipts are typed evidence carriers. Their meaning depends on how they were produced: a generic readiness receipt is not the same as an execution-produced receipt, and an archive adds durable content-addressed history without broadening the underlying claim.
Read the producer and selected scope
Inspect the command, contract identity, selected task or workflow, execution mode, findings, outcome, and evidence classes together. Do not reconstruct an earlier admission decision from post-execution filesystem state or infer selected work from a generic receipt.
ota run --receipt --json testota receipt --json --archiveota receipt --historyArchive identity preserves, not upgrades
An archive binds the recorded payload and contract snapshot for later verification. It can expose changed content against a retained expected identity, but ordinary same-user local storage is not independently authenticated when both the archive and expected state can be rewritten. Producer-signed protected history has a stronger bounded posture; neither form turns an observation into application proof, grants authority, or proves unselected repository behavior.
Canonical terminology
Evidence boundary for this lesson
Establishes
- You can read and interpret a receipt
- You understand archive structure
Does not establish
- Any specific receipt is valid for your repo
Knowledge check
What does archiving a receipt add, and what does it not add?
It preserves identity-bound history and the relevant snapshot for later verification. It does not broaden the original producer's evidence claim.