Decision provenance
What is procurement decision provenance?
Procurement decision provenance is the trace connecting a commercial decision to the evidence, uncertainty, policy and rules that produced it. Brisora preserves that chain so an AI-generated explanation can be checked against the underlying decision rather than trusted on its own.
An AI client may summarize a result well or badly. Either way, the result it summarizes names its sources, its rules and its gaps, so a person or another system can verify it without relying on the summary.
The chain
From source to outcome, with nothing implied.
Each link can be checked independently of the others.
If a link is missing, the result says which one.
What a result carries
The parts of the trace.
Source address and capture time
Where the evidence was retrieved from, and the instant it was captured.
Content hash
The SHA-256 of the content as received, so anyone can confirm they are looking at the same document.
Evidence references
For each fact: which artifact, the start and end offsets, and the passage. The offsets are exact; the passage shown may be shortened for display.
Rule trace
Every rule that was evaluated, with what it observed. Rules that did not apply are listed too, so their absence is not a guess.
Reason codes
Short fixed codes for why the outcome is what it is, such as DEADLINE_EXPIRED or REQUIRED_EVIDENCE_MISSING.
Policy version and evaluation time
The ruleset or mandate version that was applied and the instant of evaluation, both stated in the result.
Three different things
Unknown, missing and disqualifying are not the same.
A trace is only useful if it separates what was not found from what was found and ruled the decision out.
Unknown
The source contains something that cannot be read reliably. It is reported as unknown, with the reason.
Missing
The source does not state a fact the policy requires, or states it ambiguously. The decision waits on research.
Disqualifying
The source clearly states a fact, and that fact rules the decision out. The evidence for it is returned.
What is and is not traced
The limits of the current chain.
Source-level provenance — address, capture time, hash and evidence spans — applies to tender notice qualification, where Brisora retrieves the evidence itself.
For landed cost, BOM comparison and policy evaluation, the inputs are yours. The result records the source references you attach to each input and the rules applied to them. Brisora does not verify those references.
Through Brisora MCP nothing is stored, so the trace travels inside each result. There is no stored audit record to query afterwards.
See the chain in use in tender qualification and its evidence, how results reach an AI client through Brisora MCP, where the trace is produced in the system architecture, and why it exists in the rules Brisora enforces.