Evidence Packs The Artifact Behind Every Assured Decision

Most systems can tell you what happened.

Very few can show you why it was believed, when it was known, and how to reconstruct it later.

That gap is where decisions fall apart—under audit, under review, or under automation.

Evidence Packs exist to close that gap.

The problem with outputs

Dashboards look authoritative. Alerts feel timely. Screenshots get forwarded.

None of those are durable.

Ask a simple question weeks later:

"Why did we believe this at the time?"

And most systems can't answer it without re-running logic, hunting for inputs, or reconstructing context by hand.

Outputs without evidence are ephemeral truth.

What an Evidence Pack is (precisely)

An Evidence Pack is not a report and not a dashboard.

An Evidence Pack is:

A self-contained, reconstructible artifact that explains what happened, why it happened, when it was known, and how to reproduce it.

If it doesn't answer all four, it's not an Evidence Pack.

What an Evidence Pack contains

Every Evidence Pack follows the same structure, regardless of outcome.

1. Identity

• Outcome name and ID
• Run ID
• Organization
• As-of timestamp
• Health status (healthy / degraded)

This establishes what commitment this artifact belongs to.

2. Trigger summary

• What caused this to exist
• What changed (state transition)
• When it was detected and delivered
• Confidence flags

This answers:

"Why am I seeing this?"

3. Primary sources

• Direct links to authoritative inputs (e.g., EDGAR)
• Publish timestamps
• Ingest timestamps
• Checksums or hashes

No interpretation. Just verifiable inputs.

4. Canonical entities

• Issuer identifiers
• Filing accessions
• Deal or obligation IDs (if applicable)

This prevents identity drift and ambiguity downstream.

5. State before → state after

This is the heart of the pack.

It shows:

• what the system believed before
• what it believes now
• exactly what changed

Not a diff for show. A diff for accountability.

6. Methodology

• Logic version
• Rules applied
• Thresholds used
• Explicit exclusions

No black boxes. No "trust the model."

7. Known limitations

• Formatting anomalies
• Late amendments
• Missing tables
• Edge cases

This is not a weakness. It's how trust is built.

8. Delivery ledger

• Where it was sent
• When it was sent
• Whether delivery succeeded
• Retries or failures

This proves chain of custody.

9. Reproducibility

• Inputs required
• Steps to re-run
• Expected outputs

So someone else—human or agent—can verify it independently.

What Evidence Packs are not

• Not PDFs
• Not screenshots
• Not narrative memos
• Not "AI explanations"

Those can be derived from an Evidence Pack—but they are not the source of truth.

Why this matters for audits and reviews

Under scrutiny, the question is never:

"Did your system alert?"

It's:

"Was this defensible at the time?"

Evidence Packs answer that without drama:

• inputs are explicit
• timing is clear
• logic is documented
• limitations are disclosed

No re-running. No guesswork. No rewriting history.

Why this matters for agents

Agents don't just need answers. They need verifiable memory.

An agent can:

• ingest an Evidence Pack
• verify hashes
• reference it later
• justify downstream actions

Without Evidence Packs, agents are guessing. With them, agents can act responsibly.

Corrections are part of the design

Markets change. Filings get amended. Logic improves.

Evidence Packs don't pretend otherwise.

When something is superseded:

• a new Evidence Pack is issued
• it links to the prior one
• the timeline remains intact

Nothing is erased. Everything is explainable.

This is how institutional truth is maintained.

The quiet difference

Most systems optimize for:

• speed
• coverage
• convenience

Evidence Packs optimize for:

• accountability
• reconstruction
• trust over time

That's the difference between information and assurance.

The takeaway

If you can't hand someone a single artifact and say:

"This is why we believed this at the time."

You don't have assurance.

Evidence Packs are how CMD+RVL makes outcomes defensible—long after the alert fired and the dashboard changed.

They're not a feature. They're the foundation.