Decision Genealogy
The traceable chain of precedents, authorities, and context that led to a specific governance decision — the institutional equivalent of a git commit history.
Decision genealogy is the ability to trace any current governance state back to the decisions that created it. Every constraint, commitment, and authority delegation has a history: when it was created, who authorised it, what context informed it, and what previous decisions it built upon.
This is analogous to version control in software. Just as git provides a complete history of how code evolved (who changed what, when, and why), decision genealogy provides a complete history of how governance evolved.
This matters for: - Accountability: who authorised this constraint and why? - Learning: what precedents inform this decision? - Contestation: was this decision made with appropriate authority and context? - Audit: can we reconstruct the governance state at any point in time?
How Constellation handles this
Constellation's Idealoom layer maintains decision genealogy automatically. Every decision links to its precedents, and every constraint change is versioned with reason and authority.