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RFC 0003 — Omission Detection

Status: Draft Author: Martín Nicolás Sánchez Morales Created: 2026

Summary

This RFC defines the governance mechanism used to detect and record verified omissions within Janus systems.

Omission detection produces the canonical governance event:

OMISSION_DETECTED

The event is recorded in AUDIT_LOG when a verified absence of an expected record is observed.

Motivation

Governance failures often occur not through incorrect actions but through missing actions.

Traditional systems frequently treat missing records as undefined states.

Janus introduces a formal mechanism to detect and record verified omissions so that governance systems can reason about procedural failures and accountability gaps.

Specification

Omission detection

An omission is detected when an expected record cannot be found within a deterministic search scope.

Omission detection is a form of governance evaluation applied to evidence expectations and scopes.

The detection process must reference:

Governance event

When omission evidence (E−) is confirmed, the system records the event:

OMISSION_DETECTED

The event represents the governance recording of verified omission evidence (E−).

The event MUST be written to:

AUDIT_LOG

Human interpretation

Detection of an omission does not automatically imply fault.

Interpretation, escalation, or resolution MAY require human evaluation.

When human accountability is required, the system records:

HUMAN_DECISION

Rationale

Institutional failures frequently manifest as omissions rather than incorrect actions.

By explicitly recording omissions, governance systems can detect structural failures that would otherwise remain invisible.

Backwards compatibility

Not applicable (initial omission detection specification).

Security considerations

Incorrect omission detection may occur due to:

Implementations must ensure deterministic search scopes and reliable schema references when deriving omission evidence.

License

MIT License