Know Who Said It, Who Verified It, and Who Approved It.
Knowledge Chain of Custody links every approved article to the expert who provided it, the identity verification method used, and the human reviewer who signed off. Your governance evidence starts here.
- PersonCapt. HayesFlight operations · signed-in capture↓ captured
- EvidenceIn-flight Shutdown Debriefapproved Sep 2024↓ informed
- Governed knowledgeEngine Restart in-flight SOPEng. Malik · approved Oct 2024↓ cited by
- NOVAcites the approved recordEvery answer names the records it used, and who approved them.
When an auditor asks “who approved this?”, you need a chain, not a guess.
In high-skill operations, the source of a procedure matters as much as the procedure itself. When an SOP changes, an incident happens, or an auditor asks who approved this, you need a chain, not a guess.
- No attribution on tribal knowledge
- When the expert who created a procedure has left, there is no record of who established it, on what basis, or whether it was ever formally reviewed.
- Can't trace a decision back to who made it
- Without a chain of custody, responsibility for a knowledge record is diffuse. When something goes wrong, there is no clear line from the procedure to the person who approved it.
- No record of when knowledge was reviewed
- Knowledge that was accurate two years ago may be stale today. Without a review timestamp and a reviewer identity, you cannot demonstrate due diligence to an auditor.
Five custody points on every approved article.
- Session
- Capture session ID, timestamp, and debrief mode — linking the article to the specific knowledge capture event that produced it.
- Speaker
- Who provided the knowledge (email address) plus identity source: account login, manual attribution by an admin, or unknown.
- Owner
- The knowledge owner assigned responsibility for this article's accuracy going forward — the person accountable for re-review and updates.
- Approval
- Who approved it, when they approved it, and current governance status: active, stale, or needs review. Updated when review cycles are triggered.
Provenance embedded throughout the platform.
- Article detail view
- The custody timeline is shown in the article sidebar — session, speaker, identity source, owner, and approval record in one place.
- Governance Evidence Report
- The PDF governance export includes a chain of custody sample, demonstrating to auditors that knowledge provenance is recorded and accessible.
- Compliance Evidence Map
- Identity source contributes to audit evidence domain coverage.
Does every article have custody data?
Articles created before Chain of Custody was enabled will show unknown identity source. New captures link identity automatically based on the signed-in user.
Questions about Chain of Custody.
- Is the Chain of Custody tamper-resistant?
- Custody fields are written via server-side API routes using service-role access. They are not editable through the application UI.
- What is 'identity source'?
- How the contributor's identity was established: account (they were signed in), manual (an admin attributed it), or unknown (historical record without attribution).
Build your knowledge chain.
Chain of Custody is built into every approved knowledge article in DebriefCore. No additional configuration required — it starts recording from your first capture session.