# FieldTrace Charter

## 1. FieldTrace

FieldTrace is a phenomenological documentation and research practice.

It exists to make experience and inquiry traceable without forcing either into a conclusion before the record supports one.

FieldTrace is not presented as an institution, clinical service, academic authority, professional association, or separate legal entity.

The practice is defined by how the work is done.

FieldTrace is currently operated and governed by one person. There is no council, board, audit cycle, or external review body.

The sole operator is the accountable party, identified in public governance records as `FT-OP-1`; this charter does not disclose the person's legal name. Material decisions about governance, use of material, and publication must record that identifier, the date, the reasons, and the charter version. That record supports traceability; it does not create independent oversight or external review.

Concentrated authority is the current condition, not the intended end state. If distributed governance comes to exist in any form, it is described here at that point, with the date it took effect.

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## 2. Orientation

Begin with what is present.

Record what was observed, the conditions in which it appeared, what changed, and what remains uncertain.

Keep observation distinct from interpretation. Allow interpretation where interpretation is useful, but mark it as interpretation.

Do not force resolution. A trace may close a question, change the question, expose another question, or return to something encountered earlier with greater resolution.

The record remains open to correction.

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## 3. Work

FieldTrace may take the form of:

**Phenomenological documentation**
Structured documentation of an experience or state: observations, context, transitions, and uncertainty.

**Protocol design**
Observation or documentation protocols developed for a particular inquiry.

**Existing-material analysis**
Work with journals, transcripts, recordings, logs, survey responses, and other existing material. Before any act, record how the material entered the work, the defined purpose, applicable restrictions, and the basis for that act. Patterns may be extracted only within that scope. Their status remains explicit.

**Research partnerships**
Bounded investigations with an agreed scope, applicable consent, deliverables, and data handling.

These forms may overlap. Their boundaries should remain visible.

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## 4. Evidence

The record leads. The desired conclusion does not.

Claims remain proportional to what supports them.

Where relevant, distinguish:

- observation;
- attribution;
- corroboration;
- inference;
- interpretation;
- contradiction;
- source-scoped absence;
- unresolved uncertainty.

A coherent hypothesis remains a hypothesis.

Resemblance, proximity, and correlation do not by themselves establish identity, relationship, or cause. Where an identity, relationship, event, or causal connection remains unresolved, it remains unresolved.

Absence from a source is evidence only of what that source can reasonably be expected to contain.

New evidence may strengthen, weaken, contradict, or dissolve an earlier interpretation. The record must permit all four.

When the evidence stops, the claim stops.

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## 5. Traceability

A FieldTrace record should preserve enough of its path that the work can be examined rather than merely accepted.

Where applicable, retain: provenance, source, date, context, observation conditions, transformations made to material, methods used, the actor and decision-maker for material acts, the basis asserted for each act and the facts or documents that support it, competing explanations, contradictions, negative results, limitations, and unresolved questions.

Traceability does not require unrestricted disclosure. Private, confidential, sensitive, restricted, or unnecessary identifying material may remain outside the public trace. Preserving the trace is not itself a basis for retaining or disclosing the material it concerns.

The trace should expose the reasoning, not everything encountered along the way.

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## 6. Participation and consent

Participation begins only when a person agrees to a defined FieldTrace role and actively contributes within that scope. Mere appearance in material, unsolicited contact, or unsolicited provision of material does not create participation. A participant may contribute experience, responses, observations, material, or another agreed form of involvement.

Consent-based participation or contribution must record the purpose, scope, material acts, recipients, retention terms, withdrawal process, and any practical limit on withdrawal. Consent must be explicit, informed, appropriately granular, and revocable for future acts that depend on it.

Withdrawal ends future reliance on that consent. It does not rewrite the historical record of completed acts. Retention, return, deletion, or restriction of material and derivatives follows the agreed withdrawal terms and any independently established obligation. A separate basis does not expand the consent that was given or erase the limits of the contribution; any act relying on it must be established and recorded independently.

Material contributed for one purpose is not permission for an unrelated purpose.

Appearance in a public record, published source, historical archive, or other research material does not by itself create participation, consent, or permission for any act.

Absence of consent remains absence of consent. It is not converted into permission by silence, non-participation, public availability, or possession. If an act is proposed on another basis, that basis and its limits must be established independently before the act.

Public availability is not unlimited permission. Relevance still matters, and availability does not erase privacy, confidentiality, safety, attribution, context, or licensing restrictions.

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## 7. Material and data

Collect because something is relevant to a defined inquiry, not merely because it can be collected. Use the least material necessary to preserve the trace.

**Basis for each act**

Material passes through distinct acts: acquisition or receipt, access, analysis, retention, the creation of derived findings, bounded sharing, disclosure of source material, disclosure of identifying detail, and publication. Authority for one act does not establish authority for another.

A derived finding remains derived from its source even when the source is not itself disclosed. For disclosure purposes, changing form does not erase source restrictions: quotation, paraphrase, summarization, aggregation, anonymization, or another transformation does not make content independently disclosable where the proposed disclosure reproduces, identifies, exposes, or materially reveals source material or identifying detail whose disclosure lacks an established basis.

This charter does not grant permission or authority for any act. Before an act, record the actor, material, purpose, scope, applicable restrictions, asserted basis, and the facts or documents offered to establish it. If that showing is absent or uncertain, the act is not treated as authorized under FieldTrace.

Potential bases include consent or agreement; a mandate from a party entitled to grant it; a legal obligation or authority; and the access or use conditions attached to public or archival material. This list grants nothing by category. Each proposed basis must apply to the particular actor, material, purpose, and act.

Mere receipt, possession, public availability, or absence of known wrongdoing does not establish a basis for further use.

A basis is established in the record only when its material facts and, where applicable, governing terms or authority are identified and shown to cover the act. A label without that showing is an assertion, not a basis.

Known indications of unlawful access, deception, breach of confidence, or conflicting restrictions remain part of the record; publication or handover does not erase them. If provenance is unknown, record it as unknown. Unknown provenance is neither proof of wrongdoing nor clean provenance.

A later basis does not change the record that an earlier act lacked an established basis when performed. It supports only acts it actually covers. Any legal effect of later authorization is a separate, jurisdiction-specific question.

Where the basis for an act remains uncertain, it remains uncertain. Uncertainty is not converted into consent, permission, or authority by inference.

Nothing in this charter declares consent unnecessary for a class of material, person, or inquiry. Whether consent or another authority is required must be assessed for the specific act; silence does not resolve that question.

Do not solicit or intentionally collect or acquire material without a defined purpose and a basis established before that act. On unsolicited receipt, do not access, analyze, or retain the material beyond the minimum triage needed to protect it and determine disposition unless the basis for that later act is established.

Do not treat contribution for one purpose as permission to repurpose private material beyond that scope. For contributed material, the agreed scope governs acts that rely on the contributor's consent. A separate basis does not expand that consent or erase its limits; any act relying on it must be independently established and recorded.

Holding material — supplied, public, or otherwise received — is not by itself authority to analyze, retain, disclose, publish, redistribute, or repurpose it. Each act needs its own basis.

Anonymization and minimization reduce what an act exposes. They do not create a basis where none exists.

Do not preserve or reproduce sensitive or identifying information when it contributes nothing necessary to the record. At recorded review points, determine whether each retained category remains necessary and has an established retention basis. Return, delete, restrict, or minimize it when that basis ends, subject to any documented preservation obligation.

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## 8. Sharing and publication

Investigation, bounded sharing, and publication are separate acts. A trace may remain private, be shared within a bounded engagement, or become public.

Disclosure of a derived finding, disclosure of its underlying source material, and disclosure of identifying detail are separate acts. A basis for one is not a basis for another. A minimized or derived trace may be shareable or publishable on its own basis where the source material is not, but only where the disclosure itself satisfies the conditions below.

**Source-independent disclosure of derived findings**

A derived finding may be disclosed without separately establishing a disclosure basis for its underlying source material only where all of the following are established for the proposed disclosure:

- the bounded-sharing or publication act has its own recorded basis covering the actor, audience, purpose, scope, and disclosed detail;
- the disclosed finding does not quote, reproduce, identify, expose, or materially reveal source material or identifying detail whose disclosure lacks an established basis;
- the applicable consent terms, confidentiality duties, agreements, legal restrictions, source conditions, and other governing restrictions have been identified to the extent required by the proposed act. Where a restriction is established as restricting the proposed disclosure, or where whether an identified restriction reaches the proposed disclosure remains uncertain, the derived finding is not treated as source-independent for that disclosure;
- minimization is applied to the disclosure, without treating minimization or anonymization as a source of authority; and
- the disclosure preserves the finding's actual evidentiary status, limitations, and uncertainty and does not convert attribution, inference, interpretation, contradiction, source-scoped absence, or unresolved uncertainty into a stronger claim.

If any of those showings is absent or uncertain, the disclosure is not treated as source-independent under this section. Uncertainty about whether a restriction applies to the proposed disclosure is not resolved in favor of disclosure. It remains unresolved, and source-independent disclosure is not established unless and until that uncertainty is resolved. A derivative label, altered wording, aggregation, anonymization, or removal of direct quotation does not by itself satisfy the test. Derivation may not be used to carry restricted source content across a disclosure boundary in another form.

FieldTrace-authored process or governance material may be disclosed on its own basis to the extent it describes FieldTrace's methods, decisions, rules, or recorded status without disclosing source material, identifying detail, or restricted derived information beyond that basis.

The conduct of an inquiry explains how a derived finding was produced; it does not establish a basis for bounded sharing or publication. Each such act requires its own established, recorded basis. The basis must identify its audience, purpose, scope, disclosed detail, and whether the act includes source material, identifying detail, or a derived finding that fails the source-independent test above.

Publication under FieldTrace should preserve the structure of the evidence rather than present the endpoint alone. Where materially relevant, publish: the question, the sources, the method, the basis on which material was used, what was observed, what was established, what was inferred, what contradicted the working interpretation, what searches or tests returned nothing, and what remains uncertain. Sources appear in the published trace only where their disclosure rests on its own basis. Internal provenance may remain undisclosed where its disclosure lacks a basis, but the internal trace must preserve enough provenance and reasoning to support examination of the finding.

Null results belong beside positive results when they materially affect the conclusion. Methodological limitations remain visible.

A published finding should be contestable. If later evidence changes it, the trace should be capable of changing with it.

**Licensing**

Material published under FieldTrace is licensed [CC BY-SA 4.0](/LICENSE.txt) only to the extent FieldTrace holds the rights and authority to license it. Every publication must mark material excluded from the license. Source material remains subject to its applicable rights and terms; inclusion does not relicense it.

For material validly licensed by FieldTrace, the CC BY-SA grant is irrevocable subject to the license's terms, including its termination and reinstatement provisions. FieldTrace may stop distributing the material, but cannot withdraw the grant from compliant use already licensed.

When an adaptation is shared, the adapter's license must have the same CC license elements, be this version or later, or be a BY-SA compatible license as the license permits; attribution is required. This obligation applies to adaptations of licensed material. It does not bind someone who reads the work and independently writes their own.

FieldTrace will not seek patents on published methodology, paywall the methodology as a category, or make it proprietary. Publication places what was actually disclosed into the public record; it is not a guarantee that every later patent claim will fail. Any prior-art effect depends on what was disclosed, when it became public, and the law applied.

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## 9. Boundaries

FieldTrace does not claim authority through presentation.

Documentation is not proof merely because it is structured. Phenomenological description is not clinical diagnosis. Interpretation is not observation. Research inference is not established fact. A method is not valid merely because FieldTrace developed it.

No framework takes precedence over what the record actually supports. When method and observation conflict, record the conflict, test the observation conditions and the method's assumptions, and keep competing explanations visible. Do not force either into precedence.

**Refusals**

Regardless of funding, FieldTrace will not:

- use coercive or manipulative state-induction techniques;
- enter research partnerships with entities engaged in weaponization, mass surveillance, or exploitative labor;
- claim therapeutic efficacy without clinical validation;
- brand states as proprietary or trademarked experiences;
- harvest or systematically collect data from or about a person without explicit, informed, revocable, granular consent.

These are refusals, not preferences. No funding, partnership, or deadline overrides them.

Each refusal decision records the operative definition, evidence, standard, and material connection to the proposed work. A label, association, or entity-wide characterization does not establish that a refusal applies.

If a refusal may have been crossed, the affected work pauses while the accountable party records the allegation, observed facts, evidence status, scope, decision, corrective action, and unresolved questions. If the recorded finding is that the refusal was crossed, the affected work stops. A public breach notice is issued only where a separate basis for that publication is established; otherwise the decision record states why notice could not be published and when that decision will be reassessed. Any notice names the boundary and corrective action while disclosing no source or personal material beyond its publication basis, and separates allegation, finding, uncertainty, and later correction.

The operator is bound by this charter. Each research-partnership agreement must impose the applicable refusals and response process on the external partner.

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## 10. Revision

This charter describes the boundaries of FieldTrace as the practice develops. It may change.

Changes should arise from what the work reveals about the practice, not from a need to manufacture permission for a preferred finding. A later revision does not change how an earlier act is assessed against the charter version then in force.

The charter develops only by explicit, versioned revision. A material revision records the accountable decision-maker or stable public identifier, effective date, exact sections changed, rationale, whether each boundary was clarified, strengthened, or narrowed, and the SHA-256 of the prior active Markdown. The prior full text or a verifiable diff is retained. Reinterpretation is not revision.

The licensing commitment, the refusals, and the authority disclosure do not weaken within FieldTrace. They may be clarified or strengthened only where the change preserves or increases their constraint. A revision that narrows one cannot take effect as a FieldTrace Charter revision; it must be published, if at all, as the charter of a differently named practice.

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**v0.13 — 2026-08-25**
**Decision-maker:** `FT-OP-1` — the sole FieldTrace operator; legal name not disclosed in this public charter.

**Effective date:** 2026-08-25.

**Sections changed:** §§7 and 8; revision record added under §10.

**Classification:** §§7–8 clarified and strengthened. The revision does not create a categorical permission for derived findings and does not narrow consent, refusal, authority, source-disclosure, or identifying-detail boundaries. It makes explicit the conditions under which a derived finding may have a disclosure basis independent of disclosure of its source material, while adding an anti-laundering rule for transformed source content.

*(v0.13: separates disclosure of source material, identifying detail, and derived findings more explicitly. A derived finding may be boundedly shared or published on its own established basis without a separate disclosure basis for its underlying source only where the proposed disclosure does not quote, reproduce, identify, expose, or materially reveal source material or identifying detail whose disclosure lacks a basis; governing restrictions are identified to the extent required by the proposed act, and no restriction is established as restricting the proposed disclosure and no identified restriction remains uncertain as reaching it; minimization is applied without being treated as authority; and the finding's evidentiary status and uncertainty are preserved. If those showings are absent or uncertain, the derivative is not treated as source-independent. Transformation, paraphrase, aggregation, anonymization, or labeling content as derived cannot be used to carry restricted source content across a disclosure boundary. FieldTrace-authored process and governance material is separately recognized only to the extent its disclosure does not itself reveal restricted material. Adopted as v0.13 on 2026-08-25, superseding v0.12 as the active Charter. This revision establishes no basis for any past act, does not alter any assessment made under v0.12 or an earlier charter, and does not decide the permissibility of any particular trace, allegation, recipient copy, or proposed sharing act. The complete pre-edit v0.12 Markdown is retained at `/charter-history/FieldTrace_Charter_v0.12.txt`, SHA-256 `0AD2AFDC6EC1F43419D469138CBF8CEF6680ABDFE8F3CDB7759E0EFDBD6C0465`.)*

**v0.12 — 2026-08-25**
**Decision-maker:** `FT-OP-1` — the sole FieldTrace operator; legal name not disclosed in this public charter.

**Effective date:** 2026-08-25.

**Sections changed:** §§1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.

**Classification:** §§1, 3, and 5–8 clarified and strengthened; §8 licensing and patent claims narrowed to their support; §9 refusals strengthened relative to v0.11; §10 restored and strengthened. No consent, refusal, or authority boundary was narrowed relative to v0.11.

*(v0.12: removes wording that could allow non-consent, receipt, possession, public availability, or the conduct of an inquiry to supply their own authority. It makes each basis a documented test tied to a particular actor, material, purpose, and act; reconciles withdrawal and contributed-material scope without expanding consent; makes sole governance explicit and requires material decisions to be attributed in the record; restores a broader personal-data harvesting refusal and the categorical non-weakening rule; adds a recorded breach-assessment process; and narrows the CC BY-SA and patent statements to what the license and a public disclosure can establish (§§1, 3, 5–10). It retains the v0.10 and v0.11 notes as historical records. v0.11 described the §9 direct-collection rewrite as "clarified, not narrowed"; compared with v0.9, that rewrite narrowed the refusal from harvesting data generally to direct collection only. v0.12 partly reverses that narrowing within its stated personal-data scope. The complete pre-edit v0.11 Markdown is retained at `/charter-history/FieldTrace_Charter_v0.11.txt`, SHA-256 `538B555D2479AB9587C5C5F812896F2EDBA0ECC6BD880F70103F3890D1C8FB0C`. This revision establishes no basis for any past or current act, alters no investigation record, and makes no finding about motive or legal compliance.)*
*(v0.11: adopts an explicit basis-for-use model. Acquisition or receipt, access, analysis, retention, derived findings, bounded sharing, disclosure of source material, and publication are distinct acts; each rests on its own established, recorded basis, and authority for one act does not establish authority for another (§§3, 5, 6, 7, 8). Consent remains the basis for participation, contribution, research partnerships, and collecting data directly from a person (§§3, 6, 9); it is one possible basis, not the universal one. §6 adds that an inquiry does not become impermissible merely because its subject has not consented, and that the basis for each act must be established, not assumed. For contributed material, the scope agreed at contribution governs every act; withdrawal ends the consent basis and any basis existing only through the contribution, while a basis established independently of it stands (§§6, 7). A basis is established by facts independent of the wish to act, does not reach backward, and is not cured by publication or handover of wrongfully acquired material (§7). The v0.10 phrase "legitimately held/obtained" is replaced by this standard. §8 states that the CC BY-SA grant covers what FieldTrace holds authority to license; source material disclosed on another basis is not relicensed by inclusion. §9's direct-collection refusal is clarified, not narrowed, and a breach statement is not itself a basis for disclosing material. This revision does not authorize, justify, or realign any specific investigation, trace, allegation, or past use of material.)*
*(v0.10: clarifies the boundary between participation consent and analysis of existing material. Consent — explicit, informed, granular, revocable — continues to govern participation, contribution of private material, and research partnerships (§§3, 6, 9). Analysis of public, archival, or otherwise legitimately held material is not conditioned on the consent of every person appearing in it (§6); the §9 refusal is rescoped accordingly from "harvest data" to "collect data directly from a person". Holding material remains no authority to disclose, publish, or repurpose it (§7). §10 is rewritten to permit explicit, versioned development of the refusals and authority disclosure; silent, reinterpretive, or finding-driven weakening remains a rename-level breach. This revision does not retroactively authorize any specific use of material.)*
*(v0.9: removes the "run by one person" sentence from §1. The remainder of the authority disclosure — no council, no board, single accountable party, concentrated authority — is unchanged.)*
*(v0.8: restores the licensing commitment to §8, the authority disclosure to §1, the refusals to §9, and the non-weakening boundary to §10. No spiral mechanism reintroduced.)*