GMEOW Norms Module

• IRI: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/slices/norms
• Tier: extension
• Group: extensions

What This Slice Covers

This slice owns 114 terms and contributes 5 mapping or projection rows. Use it when its terms match the native fact you want to preserve; use the linkage tables to see how those facts leave GMEOW for consumer vocabularies.

Dependencies

• gmeow:slices/citations
• gmeow:slices/documents
• gmeow:slices/events
• gmeow:slices/kernel
• gmeow:slices/names
• gmeow:slices/observations
• gmeow:slices/rights
• gmeow:slices/standpoint
• gmeow:slices/teleology
• gmeow:slices/temporal

Consumers

• The lbox principia importer (4-tier authority hierarchy, special-directive triggers, paradigm precedence) and policy import/export (ODRL round-trip; OPA/Rego, Cedar, XACML down-projection — deferred to the compiler-arc window with the alignment set). The rubrics facility lives in this slice (Rubric ⊑ Norm; the P16 DAG rule bars extension→extension dependencies): consumers are the lm-eval-harness task projection, the principia RLAIF axes/score-anchor import, and LLM-judge score ingestion as vantage-indexed Assessments. The registers & personas facility also lives here (expressesNorm → Norm, activatedIn → Condition; same P16 DAG rationale): consumers are system-prompt assembly (Persona × Norms × StyleGuide — the projection that replaces principia.yaml's Jinja2 role, deferred to the compiler-arc window with the alignment set) and the principia persona_modes/paradigm-activation import.

Local Map

Examples

Food Safety Compliance

• Source: slices/extensions/norms/examples/food-safety-compliance.ttl
• GMEOW terms: gmeow:ComplianceAssessment, gmeow:Event, gmeow:EventType, gmeow:Norm, gmeow:NormativeSystem, gmeow:Organization, gmeow:Person, gmeow:assessedEvent, gmeow:assessedNorm, gmeow:complianceVerdict
• External prefixes: xsd

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example: norms, deontic modality, and compliance . A gmeow:Norm in
# a gmeow:NormativeSystem carries a gmeow:deonticModality — obligation /
# prohibition / permission / recommendation — the deontic stance the rights slice
# applies to assets, here applied to CONDUCT. Whether an event lives up to a norm
# is not a bare boolean: it is a reified gmeow:ComplianceAssessment binding the
# assessed event, the assessed norm, and a gmeow:complianceVerdict (held /
# not-held / undetermined), AS OBSERVED by an assessor with a method — so a
# contested compliance ruling can coexist with another (P9).
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/norms/> .
@prefix rdfs:  <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix xsd:   <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

ex:healthAuthority a gmeow:Organization ; gmeow:name "City Public Health Authority"@en .

ex:foodCode a gmeow:NormativeSystem ; rdfs:label "Municipal Food Safety Code"@en .

# --- An OBLIGATION norm within that system. A norm names its gmeow:normIssuer —
#     there is no ought, only ought-ACCORDING-TO an authority (the keystone).
ex:handwashNorm a gmeow:Norm ;
    rdfs:label            "Staff must wash hands before food preparation"@en ;
    gmeow:deonticModality gmeow:deonticObligation ;
    gmeow:normIssuer      ex:healthAuthority .

# --- An inspected kitchen-prep event that complies with the norm.
ex:eventTypeFoodPrep a gmeow:EventType ; rdfs:label "food preparation"@en .

ex:prepShift a gmeow:Event ;
    rdfs:label               "Lunch prep shift"@en ;
    gmeow:eventType          ex:eventTypeFoodPrep ;
    gmeow:eventTime          "2026-06-12T11:00:00Z"^^xsd:dateTime ;
    gmeow:eventTemporalFrame gmeow:temporalFrameUTCGregorian ;
    gmeow:complies           ex:handwashNorm .

ex:inspector a gmeow:Person ; gmeow:name "Health inspector"@en .

# --- The compliance ruling: a reified, assessor-scoped observation.
ex:ruling a gmeow:ComplianceAssessment ;
    gmeow:assessedEvent     ex:prepShift ;
    gmeow:assessedNorm      ex:handwashNorm ;
    gmeow:complianceVerdict gmeow:verdictHeld ;
    gmeow:vantage           ex:inspector ;
    gmeow:observationMethod gmeow:methodDirectObservation .

Terms

Classes

Properties

Individuals

Linkages

• Rows: 5
• Projection profiles: schema-org
• External vocabularies: rdf, schema

Guide

norms

Slice: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/slices/norms · tier: extension

Generalized deontics with indexed authority plus the rights graft (rights graft) — the constitutional keystone of the normative stack.

Grounding note: Norm is a gufo:Category at Entity level (the IntentionalMoment precedent), not a Kind under SocialObject — the graft places Rule ⊑ gufo:Relator beneath it, plain norms are object-like, and gufo:Object ⟂ gufo:Aspect forbids committing the umbrella to either realm; a Kind would stack identities under the rights trio (the MixIden gate caught exactly this during development). The social-convention reading lives on the concrete classes: NormativeSystem ⊑ SocialObject, the trio ⊑ Relator.

There is no ought, only ought-according-to

Every modality-bearing Norm names its normIssuer (SHACL-enforced — an anonymous ought is the deontic analogue of a global truth axiom). Issuers are agents or standpoints; normIssuer ⊑ accordingTo is documented, not axiomatised (accordingTo is an AnnotationProperty — the vantage precedent). Two contradictory normative systems coexist without inconsistency: GMEOW records what each prescribes and never adjudicates. This is the deception module's held/projected move, applied to oughts.

Precedence is data, not semantics

• AuthorityLevel — ordered vocab (absolute ≻ high ≻ medium ≻ conditional), the kernel GranularityLevel pattern; strongerThan is transitive on levels only.
• overrides — pairwise, deliberately not transitive, SHACL-irreflexive. Lex-superior chains, specificity, and cycle handling are solver work over recorded pairs (P12).
• PrecedenceTenure — the StandpointTenure idiom: higher × lower × scope (a NormativeSystem, mandatory — precedence is always scoped) × duringInterval. "Tier 2 overrode X until v3.5," withdrawable by suppression only (P10).

Conditions: stored, composed, formalized, evaluated — never executed

Condition is prose-canonical (conditionText mandatory). Composition via ConditionGroup (all/any/none, ≥2 members, nest for trees). Formalizations (ConditionExpression + expressionLanguage: prose, SPARQL ASK, CEL, Rego, Cedar, XACML, SHACL) attach via formalizedAs, and each formalization is a claim of equivalence to the prose — challengeable, confidence-bearing. Parameters (ConditionParameter) let one condition template serve many norms.

The Principle 12 boundary, operationally: no CI step, test, or tool may evaluate a ConditionExpression against the graph as part of validation — including SHACL-language expressions, which are carried as data and never loaded into the harness. Whether a condition held is a ConditionEvaluation ⊑ Observation (vantage = the evaluator; verdict vocab held / not-held / undetermined via the claimModality axiom pattern). Two evaluators disagreeing are two coexisting cells.

Compliance follows the same shape: flat violates/complies shortcuts, promoted to ComplianceAssessment ⊑ Observation when the assessor matters. Violation is always somebody's judgement; it is never entailed.

The rights graft — zero core churn

Asserted in this module, never in core: Rule ⊑ Norm, ruleAssignee ⊑ normBearer, ruleAction ⊑ prescribedConduct, plus SHACL modality invariants (a Permission carrying a deonticModality other than deonticPermission is a violation — likewise Prohibition/Duty; carrying none is fine, the subkind fixes the effective modality). The trio stays a rigid subkind partition under the open modality axis — not an inferior duplicate (each subkind has a fixed modality; the axis carries the open remainder: recommendation, supererogation, …). prescribedConduct's range is intentionally open (the tenurePosition precedent) precisely so the graft needs no dual-typing of the RightsAction vocabulary and the generated schema surface keeps a clean named domain.

The blast-radius survey's ~150 mechanical sites and 5 class-dependent conflicts (core disjointness axiom, shape targets, ODRL projection templates, competency query, grounding tests) are this slice's do-not-touch list: with the extension absent, core rights is byte-identical and behaves exactly as before.

Deferred to the compiler-arc window

Alignments (ODRL 2.2 via EDOAL — odrl:Constraint ↔ Condition is structural; LegalRuleML <Override> — the only target where precedence survives round-trip; LKIF-Core, DPV, SUMO normative attributes, UFO-L) and projections (ODRL JSON-LD, OPA/Rego, Cedar, XACML, LegalRuleML XML, each with declared-loss manifests — enforcement flattens the issuer index, said loudly). Target list fixed in norms extension; the wip-aboutness-349 mapping-set precedent applies.

The rubrics facility

A rubric is a norm for judging: Rubric ⊑ Norm, so normIssuer (no anonymous evaluation standards), overrides, AuthorityLevel, and PrecedenceTenure arrive free. It lives in this slice because the P16 DAG rule bars extension→extension dependencies — one slice carries the deontic family.

• Content reified, application solver-layer (P12): Criterion with named poles (CriterionPole — "Power from the Bottom" vs "Passive Victimhood"), ScoreScale (min/max/step; arithmetic is solver work), ScoreAnchor (range × meaning × exemplars; interpolation is solver work).
• Exemplar ⊑ CitationAct — CiTO alignment free; pins by Selector span AND/OR exemplarSubject (the entity-pattern case: a character's conduct across a whole work — design context's 823 corpus links; at least one pin, SHACL). Closed polarity trichotomy (positive / negative / cautionary) with exemplarRedirect for the anti-pattern's correct-criterion correction. The kernel aboutness axis carries the phase-gate: a span that describes trust is source material; one that enacts it is embodiment — same selector, different hasAboutness, different anchored range.
• Assessment ⊑ Observation — the judge is a vantage; an LLM judge is just a vantage, and two models disagreeing are two coexisting cells, no winner (P9). assessmentCriterion/assessmentRubric play the observationMethod role without the subproperty axiom (functional QualityValue range vs Entity values — the claimModality pattern); assessmentScoreValue is the datatype twin of observationResult. Zeros are scores, never absences. Scoring-density guidance by target granularity reuses kernel hasGranularity.
• Deferred to the compiler-arc window: EARL (EDOAL — Assertion ↔ Assessment is structural), DQV, schema.org Rating/Review, 1EdTech CASE, and the lm-eval task-YAML projection; judge outputs ingest back as vantage-indexed Assessments. Target list fixed in the alignment ledger.

The registers & personas facility

Same agent, same norms, different expression by context — and register-switching is not deception (the held/projected divergence is the design's territory; documented boundary, no axiom coupling).

• Grounding decision (deviation from the register/persona sketch, recorded): Persona is a relator (the NameUsage idiom), not a gufo:Role class — roles classify, they don't reify, and a persona needs its own identity for registers, style guides, activation conditions, and suppressible tenure. The DUL Role/Description/Situation grounding maps onto relator + Condition.
• The register spine lives in names core: gmeow:Register (open umbrella) with NameRegister ⊑ Register — address and expression draw from one vocabulary, and the dependency direction requires the umbrella below its consumers. This facility mints the persona-facing seeds (public, private, ceremonial, clinical, brand voice).
• Expression machinery: personaBearer (one agent, many co-equal personas — no primaryPersona, ever), personaRegister (≥1, open vocab), activatedIn (→ Condition or situation type; blend-vs-compete is solver work over recorded precedence), expressesNorm (→ Norm). Persona precedence needs no new machinery: overrides/PrecedenceTenure on the activation norms.
• The same-norms invariant is a query, not a shape (registers-norm-divergence.rq): divergence is legal (P9) — the query makes it visible. Test-proven in both directions.
• The voice payload is byte-perfect: StyleGuide + exemplifiedBy → content-digested Documents carrying hasAboutness aboutnessEnacts — the document does not describe the voice, it is the voice; an undigested exemplar is a SHACL violation (silent drift).
• Deferred to the compiler-arc window: system-prompt assembly (Persona × Norms × StyleGuide — the projection that replaces principia.yaml's Jinja2 role), AI character-card JSON, LexInfo/OLiA/DUL alignment rows. Target list fixed in the alignment ledger.

Terms

gmeow:Norm · gmeow:NormativeSystem

Norm is a gufo:Category at Entity level — a prescription existing by social convention that records an issuer prescribes some conduct and asserts nothing about the world. NormativeSystem is a body of norms with a shared identity (constitution, legal code, code of conduct, principia, rubric set); member norms attach via partOf, and competing systems coexist without adjudication.

gmeow:DeonticModality · gmeow:deonticModality

The open deontic-force vocabulary — obligation, prohibition, permission, recommendation (individuals, never subclasses), seeded so supererogation and exemption can join without schema change. deonticModality is the functional property fixing a norm's single force; a modality-bearing norm must also carry an issuer.

gmeow:normIssuer · gmeow:systemIssuer · gmeow:normBearer · gmeow:prescribedConduct

normIssuer names the agent or standpoint according to which a norm holds — the keystone turning an ought into an ought-according-to; domain-free, non-functional (co-issued norms carry several), documented as ⊑ accordingTo. systemIssuer ⊑ normIssuer issues a whole NormativeSystem. normBearer names a bound agent (absent = everyone in the issuer's scope). prescribedConduct points at the governed conduct — an event type, a Goal (core teleology), a situation, or a rights action — with an intentionally open range.

gmeow:AuthorityLevel · gmeow:strongerThan · gmeow:hasAuthorityLevel

The ordered authority-grade vocabulary (absolute ≻ high ≻ medium ≻ conditional), the kernel GranularityLevel pattern. strongerThan is transitive on the levels only; hasAuthorityLevel records the grade an issuing system claims for a norm (non-functional — sources may grade differently and coexist). What the order does to conflicts is solver work.

gmeow:overrides · gmeow:PrecedenceTenure · gmeow:precedenceHigher · gmeow:precedenceLower · gmeow:precedenceScope

overrides is pairwise defeasible precedence — deliberately not transitive, SHACL-irreflexive; chains and cycles are solver work over the recorded pairs. PrecedenceTenure is the reified, time-scoped form ("Tier 2 overrode X until v3.5") carrying its precedenceHigher / precedenceLower norms (functional, distinct) and a mandatory precedenceScope (a NormativeSystem — precedence is always scoped), withdrawn by suppression only.

gmeow:Condition · gmeow:conditionText · gmeow:normCondition

Condition is a describable circumstance whose canonical form is prose — the trigger of a conditional norm, a persona's activation context, a causal antecedent. conditionText is the mandatory natural-language statement that formalizations approximate. normCondition names the condition(s) under which a norm applies (several are an implicit conjunction).

gmeow:ConditionGroup · gmeow:GroupOperator · gmeow:groupOperator · gmeow:groupMember

A composite condition combining members with explicit logic. GroupOperator is the closed trichotomy — all (and), any (or), none (not); richer trees nest groups, never add operators. groupOperator is the functional, mandatory operator; groupMember attaches the members (at least two by SHACL). A group is itself a Condition.

gmeow:ConditionExpression · gmeow:expressionText · gmeow:ExpressionLanguage · gmeow:expressionLanguage · gmeow:formalizedAs

A ConditionExpression is a machine formalization in a named language — stored, never executed (Principle 12): no CI step, test, or tool evaluates it against the graph. expressionText carries the verbatim source; ExpressionLanguage is the open language vocabulary (prose, SPARQL ASK, CEL, Rego, Cedar, XACML, SHACL) declared via expressionLanguage. formalizedAs attaches a formalization as a challengeable claim of equivalence to the prose.

gmeow:ConditionParameter · gmeow:conditionParameter · gmeow:parameterName · gmeow:parameterValue · gmeow:parameterEntity

A named binding that instantiates a condition template so one Condition serves many norms. conditionParameter attaches bindings; parameterName is the mandatory key; a parameter carries exactly one of parameterValue (literal) or parameterEntity (IRI) by SHACL.

gmeow:ConditionEvaluation · gmeow:evaluatedCondition · gmeow:EvaluationVerdict · gmeow:evaluationVerdict

Whether a condition held is a ConditionEvaluation ⊑ Observation, vantage = the evaluator — never a graph entailment; two evaluators disagreeing are two coexisting cells. evaluatedCondition (⊑ observedFeature) names the reported condition. EvaluationVerdict is the closed trichotomy held / not-held / undetermined, carried by the functional evaluationVerdict.

gmeow:violates · gmeow:complies · gmeow:ComplianceAssessment · gmeow:assessedEvent · gmeow:assessedNorm · gmeow:complianceVerdict

violates / complies are the flat shortcuts (Event → Norm), indexed to whoever asserts them and never entailed. Promote to ComplianceAssessment ⊑ Observation when the assessor, evidence, or confidence must be first-class: assessedEvent (⊑ observedFeature) and assessedNorm name the pair, complianceVerdict reuses the verdict vocabulary (held = compliant, not-held = violative).

gmeow:Rubric · gmeow:Criterion · gmeow:hasCriterion

A Rubric ⊑ Norm is a norm for judging — a reified evaluation framework that names its issuer and may be overridden; applying it is solver work that returns vantage-indexed Assessment cells. Criterion is one evaluative axis with named poles; hasCriterion ⊑ hasPart attaches the axes (rubrics are multi-axis by design).

gmeow:CriterionPole · gmeow:rewardPole · gmeow:penaltyPole · gmeow:CriterionDomain · gmeow:criterionDomain

CriterionPole is a named extreme of a criterion — a small information object with its own label and definition ("Power from the Bottom"), not a bare number. rewardPole and penaltyPole are the functional, mandatory, mutually distinct poles. CriterionDomain is the open subject-domain vocabulary (relational, factual, aesthetic, safety, stylistic) carried by criterionDomain.

gmeow:ScoreScale · gmeow:usesScale · gmeow:scaleMin · gmeow:scaleMax · gmeow:scaleStep

ScoreScale is a numeric scale — minimum, maximum, optional step; scale arithmetic is solver work. usesScale attaches it at the rubric level (default) or criterion level (override). scaleMin / scaleMax are mandatory bounds (min < max by SHACL); scaleStep is the optional discrete step (absent = continuous).

gmeow:ScoreAnchor · gmeow:hasScoreAnchor · gmeow:anchorRangeMin · gmeow:anchorRangeMax · gmeow:anchorMeaning · gmeow:anchorExemplar

A ScoreAnchor pins a score range to its meaning and exemplars — the rubric's calibration content, with interpolation left to the solver. hasScoreAnchor attaches anchors to a criterion (high / medium / low coexist). anchorRangeMin / anchorRangeMax bound the range; the mandatory anchorMeaning carries the calibration prose (one per language tag); anchorExemplar pins exemplars to the range.

gmeow:Exemplar · gmeow:ExemplarPolarity · gmeow:exemplarPolarity · gmeow:exemplarSubject · gmeow:exemplarRedirect · gmeow:exemplarRationale

Exemplar ⊑ CitationAct holds something up as an example — pinned by citation Selector AND/OR an exemplarSubject (a character's conduct across a work; at least one by SHACL). ExemplarPolarity is the closed trichotomy positive / negative / cautionary, carried by the functional, mandatory exemplarPolarity; exemplarRedirect sends a cautionary case to the criterion it actually evidences; exemplarRationale is the localizable judgement prose.

gmeow:Assessment · gmeow:assessmentTarget · gmeow:assessmentCriterion · gmeow:assessmentRubric · gmeow:assessmentScoreValue

Assessment ⊑ Observation scores a target against a criterion or whole rubric — vantage = the judge; an LLM judge is just a vantage and disagreeing models are coexisting cells. assessmentTarget (⊑ observedFeature) names what is scored; assessmentCriterion / assessmentRubric play the observationMethod role without the subproperty axiom (claimModality pattern); assessmentScoreValue is the mandatory numeric twin of observationResult — zeros are scores, never absences.

gmeow:Persona · gmeow:personaBearer · gmeow:personaRegister · gmeow:activatedIn · gmeow:expressesNorm

Persona is a reified expression policy of one agent (a relator, not a gufo:Role): PRIMARY and PRIVATE are two co-equal personas, withdrawn by suppression, never ranked. personaBearer is the functional, mandatory bearer; personaRegister draws ≥1 register from the names-core spine; activatedIn names the activation Condition or situation; expressesNorm makes the same-norms invariant queryable rather than a shape (divergence is legal).

gmeow:StyleGuide · gmeow:styleGuideFor · gmeow:exemplifiedBy

StyleGuide is the voice payload of a persona or register — prose whose register IS the content. styleGuideFor names what it voices (a Persona and/or Register). exemplifiedBy attaches byte-perfect content-digested Documents that carry aboutnessEnacts — the document does not describe the voice, it is the voice; an undigested exemplar is a SHACL violation.