/what-is-garp
What is GARP?
Definition
GARP, the Governed Analytical Records Protocol, governs whether model-mediated analytical material becomes durable system content at all, by separating drafting, retrieval, synthesis, review, promotion, revision, dispute, and publication into visible record states with explicit transitions between them. A claim does not become knowledge merely because it appeared in an answer, was cached for retrieval, ended up in a database row, or was rendered onto a page.
GARP is not RAG
Retrieval-augmented generation supplies context to a model so it can produce an answer to a query. GARP governs the question of whether the analytical material in that exchange should become a record at all, and on what conditions. The two operate at different layers and answer different questions: RAG asks what context to surface for an answer, while GARP asks whether anything in that exchange has cleared review, source verification, and the admission boundary required to become durable system content.
Core objects
| Object | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Source | Something the system relies on |
| Capture | A preserved version of a source or document |
| Fragment | A sub-document span used to support a claim |
| Claim | An assertion attached to a record |
| Candidate Record | A proposed record that has not yet been admitted |
| Evidence Pack | The bundle of sources, fragments, and review actions supporting a record |
| Review Action | A governed decision that gates promotion |
| Record | A durable governed knowledge object |
| Governance State | The current projected status of a record from its event chain |
| Audit Event | A governed action that changes system state |
| Digest / Export | A human-readable export of governed records |
Doctrine
Five lines summarize the disposition that the protocol enforces, paraphrased here for non-developer readers and used elsewhere as compact shorthand inside the implementation references.
Retrieval is not publication.
Synthesis is not canon.
A cache is not knowledge.
Promotion is not save.
Records require custody, lineage, and review.
Admission pipeline
Ingest > Parse > Source Register > Candidate > Evidence Pack > Review > Promote > Record > DigestWhy this matters
A system that only retrieves, generates, and saves cannot answer the question "where did this come from, who reviewed it, and what has changed since it was admitted." GARP makes those questions answerable because admission, review, and revision become governed events rather than implicit side effects of editing or saving, and because the supporting sources, fragments, and review actions are preserved alongside the record itself rather than discarded after the answer is produced.