Rendered from docs/obligations/0047-the-scope-of-a-sub-document-identifier.md in the Headwater corpus. Every document on this half of the site is typed by the taxonomy the descriptor names: corpus.json.

The scope of a sub-document identifier

Context

Acceptance criteria are one of the five artifacts that receive a stable identifier, and a contract sidecar gives them one. Nothing says what scopes that identifier. Allocation is reconcile-first over the corpus, which is the wrong denominator if a criterion numbers within its requirement.

Obligation

Nobody has minted a criterion, because no specification of the sidecar exists. This is the other half of identity below the grain of a document, and the two differ in their remedy. That item converts an entry into a document, and a criterion stays inside a sidecar and needs a parent to number against.

Discharge

The first half is settled and it settles nothing here. An obligation_record is a document, so the corpus is the right denominator for it, and the decision-record entry allocates one reconcile-first over the corpus. A criterion is not a document, and no conversion is available to it.