What is Contestability?
Contestability ensures people can challenge automated decisions and receive binding review.
Read explainerExplainers
Short, reusable definitions with examples and next-step artifacts.
Start here
Featured explainers
These six cover the core governance capabilities most teams need first.
What are Ethical Interrupts?
Ethical interrupts are deliberate checkpoints that pause automation when risk thresholds are crossed.
Read explainerWhat is a Repair Log?
Repair logs track remediation actions after harm or errors and tie them to receipts and owners.
Read explainerWhat is a Safety Valve?
Safety valves are fallback mechanisms that release pressure when automation risks harm.
Read explainerWhat is Stoppability?
Stoppability explains the right to halt automated processes and protect people from forced tunnels.
Read explainerWhat is Time-to-Halt (TTH)?
Time-to-Halt (TTH) defines how quickly an automated system must stop after a halt request.
Read explainerAuthority as a Lease
A grant of authority is held for a term against a renewable justification, not owned outright.
Read explainerError-Bearing Parties
The people who absorb a system's errors are the first to see failures and the last able to act, unless standing gives them a route in.
Read explainerOpen weights and the delegation boundary
Ethotechnics does not favor open or closed weights. It classifies a deployment by nine properties and attaches governance to the assembled system, not to the model.
Read explainerThree Kinds of Reversibility
Technical, operational, and institutional reversibility are separate claims, and only the third decides whether a correction will ever be used.
Read explainerWhat are Ethical Interrupts?
Ethical interrupts are deliberate checkpoints that pause automation when risk thresholds are crossed.
Read explainerWhat is a Burden Index?
A burden index quantifies the time and effort a system imposes on people.
Read explainerWhat is a Consent Journey?
A consent journey maps how consent is requested, renewed, revoked, and recorded over time.
Read explainerWhat is a Permission Surface?
The permission surface is the set of authority grants in force, each with an evidence basis, a scope, a state, and an expiry.
Read explainerWhat is a Repair Log?
Repair logs track remediation actions after harm or errors and tie them to receipts and owners.
Read explainerWhat is a Safety Valve?
Safety valves are fallback mechanisms that release pressure when automation risks harm.
Read explainerWhat is an Intervention Specification?
An intervention specification replaces human in the loop with six answerable questions about who can actually change the system.
Read explainerWhat is Contestability?
Contestability ensures people can challenge automated decisions and receive binding review.
Read explainerWhat is Design Authority?
Design authority names the accountable owner who can approve, change, or halt a system’s design.
Read explainerWhat is Institutional Debris?
Institutional debris is the record of what people actually did to keep a formal system functioning: workarounds, overrides, tickets, grievances, and exception codes.
Read explainerWhat is Justified Delegation?
Justified delegation is a delegation whose authority, evidence, and correction capacity are all still in force today.
Read explainerWhat is Stoppability?
Stoppability explains the right to halt automated processes and protect people from forced tunnels.
Read explainerWhat is Time-to-Halt (TTH)?
Time-to-Halt (TTH) defines how quickly an automated system must stop after a halt request.
Read explainerAlso under explainers
Written as pages rather than collection entries
The index above is generated from the explainer collection, so these five sit outside it: longer arguments, a checklist, and phrasing to reuse.
Governance as operational capability
Why governance is something an organisation can be more or less able to do, rather than a document it has.
Read explainerPublic memory for contestability terms
What has to be remembered, and by whom, for a challenge to still mean something later.
Read explainerRemedy essentials for accountable systems
The eight mechanisms that keep contestability real, each anchored to a phase of the remedy lifecycle.
Read explainerContestability checklist
A pass/fail screen to run over a decision flow before shipping it or auditing it.
Read explainerLanguage people can use
Copy-ready phrasing for email, chat, or an intake form when you need a contestable record.
Read explainerSee also: Taxonomy · Standards · Mechanisms