Definition
A rule, declared in advance, that says what happens when something is observed: when this discrepancy, expiry, or threshold occurs, this permission moves to this state, answered by this owner, within this deadline. Triggers are the wiring between monitoring and authority, and they are what give a policy record force over a grant state.
It matters because observation without a possible transition is theater. A trigger is the smallest object that makes a dashboard part of the control system rather than a record of what already happened, and it is how policy as state acquires force over a running system.
DiagnosticTemporal
Tests that show it is in place
- Every monitored signal names the state it can change, or is marked explicitly as informational.
- Each trigger names an owner and a response clock.
- Silence past the clock is treated as a governance failure, not as a pending state.
Evidence to keep
- Artifact: A trigger table mapping signals to state transitions, owners, and clocks.
- Behavior: A monitored discrepancy producing a reconsideration record within its clock.
- Metric: Share of monitored signals with a declared state transition, and clock breach rate.
References
- STD-07 Revisable delegation record · Standard