Amendments
PlainSight Lab does not treat governance as content. Governing documents are binding.
This page defines how changes occur to binding documents and how those changes are recorded.
If it is not amended through process, it is not changed.
1. What Can Be Amended
Amendments apply to documents that are designated:
- Active in Docs, and/or
- identified as canonical sources of truth (constitution, thesis, governance framework, policies)
Draft documents may be edited freely until they become Active.
2. Amendment Classes
PlainSight Lab recognizes three amendment classes:
A) Editorial
Spelling, grammar, formatting, link correction.
No change in meaning or obligations.
B) Clarifying
Clarifies existing intent without changing authority, scope, or constraints.
May add examples, tighten language, or remove ambiguity.
C) Substantive
Changes meaning, scope, obligations, authority, thresholds, or enforcement.
Substantive amendments require elevated scrutiny.
3. Minimum Requirements for Any Amendment
All amendments must include:
- what changed
- why it changed
- who authorized it
- effective date
- impact assessment (what downstream artifacts are affected)
Amendments are recorded as Decision Records.
4. Thresholds
- Editorial: Steward approval + record entry
- Clarifying: Steward approval + record entry + link to impacted docs
- Substantive: Steward approval + explicit “Substantive” designation + record entry + cooling-off period
For MVP, the cooling-off period is:
72 hours between proposal and ratification
unless the change addresses an active security incident.
5. Publication and Versioning
When an amendment is ratified:
- the document version is incremented (e.g., v1.0 → v1.1)
- the effective date is updated
- the Decision Record is linked from the amended doc (or referenced in notes)
Previous versions are treated as read-only artifacts.