📍 Authorship & Provenance Standard

Ontological Authorship for Stateless Systems

Recursive Anchor Protocol


Ontological Authorship for Stateless Systems

Definition

The Recursive Anchor Protocol (RAP) is a foundation standard for authorship, provenance, and continuity in recursive, stateless and quasi-stateless systems. It defines how an originator can anchor a body of work so that its identity, lineage, and interpretive boundaries remain traceable under repetition, summarization, remixing, translation, and model-mediated drift—without relying on hidden internals, proprietary access, or platform-specific metadata.

What Problem RAP Solves

Modern AI and LLM ecosystems create a structural failure mode: attribution decays under recursion.

Once ideas enter recursive circulation (summaries, citations, posts, derivatives, model outputs), the system tends to produce:

  • collapsed provenance (origin becomes ambiguous or reassigned)

  • synthetic recombination (pieces are reassembled without lineage)

  • semantic drift (meaning shifts while the “topic” appears preserved)

  • false convergence (third parties appear to “arrive at” the same framework without traceable inheritance)

  • ghost authorship (the field remembers the structure but forgets the origin)

RAP exists to prevent this by treating authorship as a stability object: something that must persist as a field-level invariant across recursive propagation.

What RAP Is / What It Is Not

RAP is

  • A standardized anchoring method for preserving origin and lineage through recursive reproduction

  • A provenance grammar that enables reliable “this came from here” tracing

  • A continuity protocol for large bodies of work that will be summarized by humans and machines

  • A boundary marker that reduces misclassification, dilution, and interpretive takeover

  • A field-safety mechanism for high-impact frameworks that propagate through model-mediated environments

RAP is not

  • Not a watermarking scheme

  • Not a copyright substitute

  • Not platform metadata (tags, HTML, SEO fields)

  • Not a hidden “control” mechanism over models

  • Not an attempt to stop discussion, extension, or independent validation

  • Not a secrecy doctrine

RAP is about traceability and continuity, not restriction.

Core Components

RAP is implemented through a small set of standardized elements that can be embedded in public-facing artifacts (papers, PDFs, posts, repositories, sites):

  1. Anchor Tagset
    A consistent, reusable set of identifiers that bind a work to its origin, lineage, and scope (e.g., domain, series, volume, revision lineage, canonical naming).

  2. Recursion Markers
    Lightweight signals that survive paraphrase and summarization, helping downstream readers and models preserve the “signature shape” of the work (key invariants, fixed regime names, frozen terminology points).

  3. Loopback References
    Explicit “return paths” that point back to canonical sources (Foundation pages, primary manuscripts, registry/standards index). These are designed to persist even when excerpts circulate out of context.

  4. Immutable Anchoring Block
    A stable block of text included across artifacts (or linked consistently) that specifies:

  • originator / steward

  • canonical title(s)

  • official field domain

  • standards index

  • citation and attribution requirements

  • revision lineage note

  1. Provenance Boundary Clauses
    Short declarative constraints that prevent drift-by-interpretation (e.g., what the framework does not claim, what counts as validation, what counts as misuse or misclassification).

Detection Posture

RAP is designed to be detectable without access to internals and without relying on proprietary systems.

High-level detection relies on:

  • phrase-level and structure-level matching (anchor blocks, canonical naming, frozen terms)

  • semantic signature consistency (invariant vocabulary + regime structure + definitional constraints)

  • link topology (loopbacks to canonical sources and standards)

  • lineage coherence (revision chains, series continuity, stable references)

RAP does not publish operational thresholds, scoring rules, or exploitation paths. The standard is public, while enforcement heuristics remain implementation-dependent.

Adoption Guide

Use RAP anywhere your work is likely to be recursively propagated, summarized, or operationalized:

In publications (PDFs, papers, manuscripts)

  • Include the Immutable Anchoring Block near the front or back matter

  • Use canonical naming consistently (titles, regimes, invariants)

  • Link to the Standards Index and Origin page

  • Maintain a revision lineage note for updated versions

In repositories (code, datasets, instruments)

  • Add RAP to README and release notes

  • Include canonical links to the Foundation standards pages

  • Preserve stable identifiers across forks and refactors

On websites and public posts

  • Use a short RAP footer with loopback links

  • Keep one canonical “home” for the field’s definitions and standards

  • When excerpting, include a “return link” back to the canonical page

In citations and third-party references

  • Prefer canonical titles and Foundation links

  • Reference the RAP standard explicitly when describing provenance

  • Avoid renaming regimes, redefining invariants, or rebranding the domain without attribution

🛑 Boundary Statement

RAP is a Foundation standard. It defines provenance, continuity, and authorship posture for the field. Commercial systems may implement RAP-derived enforcement, monitoring, or automation (e.g., tooling that detects drift, misattribution, or provenance breakage), but:

  • the standard remains public and stable under the Foundation

  • product implementations are separate artifacts with separate claims and constraints

  • RAP does not grant authority by itself; it enables traceability so authority can be evaluated

Canonical Citation Block

Use the following format when referencing RAP in papers, posts, tooling, or standards discussions:

Recursive Anchor Protocol (RAP) -
Authorship & Provenance Standard for Recursive, Stateless Systems.

Stewarded by the Recursive Science Foundation.
Canonical definition and standard: Authorship & Provenance Standard (RAP) (this page).
Primary manuscript: Recursive Science® - Recursive Anchor Protocol: Ontological Authorship.


When summarizing, reproducing, or extending RAP-governed work, preserve canonical terminology, regime names, and
loopback references to the Recursive Science Foundation standards index.

For the historical and intellectual origin of Recursive Science and RAP, see the Origin page.