Glossary entry

Capability Catalog

Glossary entry in System states & architectures. Definitions, checks, and evidence for Capability Catalog.

Quick takeaways

The record of what a decision system can do, maintained separately from what it is permitted to do.

Definition

The record of what a decision system can do, maintained separately from what it is permitted to do. Each entry names an action class, how it was verified, and when the verification was last refreshed, and entries arrive through capability discovery.

It matters because the catalog is what an authority grant is written against. Comparing catalog to grants is the direct test of whether capability has outrun authority, and a catalog nobody refreshes silently stops being that test. A stale entry also removes the ground a revisable delegation stands on, because the grant then rests on a capability nobody has re-verified.

VisibilityStructural

Scale: Organizational · Phases: Design, Deployment, Audit · Measurability: Fully measurable · Maturity: Active research

Scope
D. System states & architectures. Operational postures that determine how harm is absorbed—or amplified.
Genealogy
The counterpart object to the grant register: one records what is possible, the other what is permitted, and the gap between them is the governable quantity.

Adjacent terms

Capability Discovery Authority Grant Capability Overhang Permission Surface

Related concepts

Also tagged: Visibility

Rubber-Stamp Review Stoppability Reversibility Fair Burden Distribution Contestability Explainability for Accountability

Also tagged: Structural

Ethotechnics Moral Behavior (of Systems) Ethical Load Path Ethotechnic Audit Conviviality Ethotechnic Maturity

References

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Cite this glossary entry Formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX, RIS

Version

v1.4.0

Last updated

Sep 18, 2026

DOI

Pending Zenodo deposit

APA

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. (2026). Capability Catalog. Ethotechnics glossary. https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/capability-catalog

MLA

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. "Capability Catalog." Ethotechnics glossary, 2026, https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/capability-catalog.

Chicago

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. "Capability Catalog." Ethotechnics glossary. Sep 18, 2026. https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/capability-catalog.

BibTeX

@misc{glossary_capability-catalog,
  title={Capability Catalog},
  author={Ethotechnics Institute Research Team},
  year={2026},
  howpublished={Ethotechnics glossary},
  url={https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/capability-catalog},
  version={v1.4.0}
}

RIS

TY  - WEB
TI  - Capability Catalog
AU  - Ethotechnics Institute Research Team
PY  - 2026
UR  - https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/capability-catalog
ER  -

Scholarly metadata

Authorship

Contact: research@ethotechnics.org

Publication details

  • Published: Dec 3, 2025
  • Last updated: Sep 18, 2026
  • Version: v1.4.0
  • DOI: Pending Zenodo deposit

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Credit Ethotechnics Institute, include the term title + version, and link to the glossary permalink.

Archive: Wayback Machine history

Changelog

  • v1.7.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Non-Finality, Consequential Contradiction, and The Excluded Case, and generalized the falsified denominator into the falsified ledger — completing the five concerns and the fallibilist ground they stand on.
  • v1.6.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Human Non-Substitutability, Safe Incompleteness, Anti-Conversion Rights, Abstention, Constitutional Debt, Discretion Migration, and Corrigibility Rent — the person-side principles, the three abstentions, and the rent concept.
  • v1.5.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Exception Absorption, Exception Learning, Case Corrigibility, Structural Corrigibility, Institutional Learning, Corrective Debt, and the Workaround Presumption, formalizing the historical turn: reading institutions through their failure trajectories rather than their stated controls.
  • v1.4.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Residual Complexity, Complexity Displacement, Falsified Denominator, Closure Without Remainder, Constitutional Governance, and Post-Optimization Rigor, embedding the foundational contention of burden redistribution.
  • v1.3.0 · 2026-09-11 — Added Attestation, Liability Record, Carve-Out, Delegation Chain, Composed Latency, and Silent-Harm Discovery, each bound to the standard clause that requires it.
  • v1.2.0 · 2026-09-08 — Added The Non-Conversion Principle, Exit Cost, and Jurisdictional Path Dependence, each linked to the theory essay that argues for it.
  • v1.1.0 · 2026-01-09 — Expanded scholarly metadata, operational tests, and provenance notes.
  • v1.0.0 · 2025-12-03 — Initial glossary release with stable permalinks.