CVCP — Civilization Value Cycle Protocol
A protocol specification for tracing value from Origin → Derivative → Trace → Contribution → Audit → Royalty → Settlement → Reconciliation in AI-driven and agentic systems.
Current version:
v0.5.0 — Reconciliation & Recovery
AI systems increasingly:
- consume external knowledge;
- combine multiple sources;
- make decisions;
- generate commercially valuable outputs;
- invoke paid tools and APIs;
- perform transactions;
- act through autonomous agents.
But a fundamental question remains:
Where did the value come from, who contributed to it, how was that contribution evaluated, was value actually returned, and what happens if the result was wrong?
CVCP provides a machine-readable structure for answering that question.
Origin
↓
Derivative
↓
Trace Chain
↓
Evidence Assessment
↓
Contribution Assessment
↓
Audit
↓
Royalty
↓
Settlement Request
↓
External Settlement
↓
Settlement Receipt
↓
Dispute
↓
Reconciliation
↓
Recovery
CVCP is not a payment network.
It is the trace, attribution, audit, and value-lifecycle layer around payment.
v0.5 introduces a critical rule:
A completed settlement must remain correctable without erasing its history.
Real systems fail.
A settlement may contain:
- a wrong beneficiary;
- an incorrect amount;
- duplicated execution;
- missing execution;
- incorrect contribution assessment;
- disputed attribution;
- incorrect Audit;
- invalid authorization.
A trustworthy Value Cycle therefore cannot end at:
settled
It must also support:
settled
↓
disputed
↓
reconciliation
↓
correction
↓
recovery
CVCP does not silently overwrite historical records.
Wrong:
Royalty r001 = 10
↓
edit
↓
Royalty r001 = 9
Correct:
Royalty r001 = 10
↓
Reconciliation
↓
Royalty r002 = 9
The original record remains part of the audit history.
Correction
must create history,
not destroy history.
schemas/
├── origin-record.schema.json
├── derivative-record.schema.json
├── trace-record.schema.json
├── trace-chain-record.schema.json
├── evidence-assessment-record.schema.json
├── contribution-assessment-record.schema.json
├── audit-record.schema.json
├── royalty-record.schema.json
├── settlement-request-record.schema.json
├── settlement-receipt-record.schema.json
├── dispute-record.schema.json
├── reconciliation-record.schema.json
├── state-transition-record.schema.json
└── value-cycle-record.schema.json
Defines the root asset.
OID
The Origin contains rights, licensing, attribution, royalty, provenance, and policy information.
Declares that an output depends on one or more Origins.
Origin
↓
Derivative
Records what actually happened.
reference
transform
reasoning
decision
action
result
Trace is evidence.
It is not automatically judgment.
Evaluates the quality and relevance of Trace evidence.
Trace
↓
Evidence Assessment
Estimates how much each Origin contributed.
Evidence
↓
Contribution
Contribution must be explainable rather than arbitrarily assigned.
Evaluates Evidence and Contribution.
Contribution
↓
Audit
Audit includes explicit confidence and status.
Converts audited contribution into value allocation.
Audit
↓
Royalty
Important:
Royalty ≠ Payment
A Royalty describes what should be returned.
Settlement is executed externally.
Royalty
↓
Settlement Request
║
║ Settlement Boundary
║
External Executor
↓
Settlement Receipt
CVCP never requires possession of payment credentials or private keys.
v0.5 introduces explicit disputes.
Settlement
↓
Dispute
A Dispute must identify exactly what is challenged.
A Reconciliation records:
cause
affected records
resolution actions
resulting records
authorization
outcome
This allows correction without destroying history.
Corrected records may contain:
supersedes_ref
Supported families include:
Audit → Audit
Royalty → Royalty
Settlement Request → Settlement Request
Settlement Receipt → Settlement Receipt
The supersession graph must remain acyclic.
CVCP does not require every problem to restart from Origin.
Settlement failed
↓
Retry
Origin, Trace, Audit, and Royalty remain unchanged.
Royalty incorrect
↓
Reconciliation
↓
New Royalty
Contribution disputed
↓
Reconciliation
↓
Audit reassessment
If Origin or Trace integrity is invalid, recovery may return to the causal layer.
This makes recovery proportional to the actual failure.
origin_registered
derivative_created
trace_recorded
audit_pending
audit_provisional
audit_verified
royalty_calculated
settlement_pending
settlement_processing
settlement_failed
settled
disputed
reconciliation_pending
reconciliation_processing
reconciled
Canonical path:
Origin
↓
Derivative
↓
Trace
↓
Audit
↓
Royalty
↓
Settlement
↓
Settled
Reconciliation path:
Settled
↓
Disputed
↓
Reconciliation Pending
↓
Reconciliation Processing
↓
Reconciled
Run:
python scripts/validate_examples.pyThe validator checks both JSON Schema conformance and semantic integrity.
It covers:
- Origin references;
- causal parent integrity;
- Trace DAG cycles;
- Trace Chain completeness;
- Evidence membership;
- Contribution calculations;
- normalization;
- Audit confidence;
- Royalty calculations;
- Settlement Request authorization;
- Settlement amount preservation;
- Settlement Receipt integrity;
- idempotency;
- Dispute subject resolution;
- Reconciliation references;
- resolution-action compatibility;
- supersession self-reference;
- supersession cycles;
- settlement retry invariants;
- corrected amount conservation;
- state continuity;
- final Value Cycle consistency.
The repository also runs validation through GitHub Actions.
examples/pass/
contains valid protocol histories.
examples/fail/
contains deliberately invalid records and semantic scenarios.
A valid implementation must distinguish:
structurally invalid
from:
structurally valid
but semantically invalid
Therefore CVCP conformance is:
JSON Schema
+
Semantic Validation
Do not place raw secrets inside CVCP records.
Do not store:
private key
seed phrase
bank password
card secret
API secret
authorization token
Use references instead:
destination_ref
authorization_ref
external_transfer_ref
external_transaction_ref
CVCP records authority evidence.
It does not become the authority.
v0.1
Value Cycle
v0.2
Causal Integrity
v0.3
Contribution & Audit Model
v0.4
Royalty & Settlement Interface
v0.5
Reconciliation & Recovery
The evolution can be summarized as:
Where did value come from?
↓
How was it transformed?
↓
Who contributed?
↓
How was that judged?
↓
How much value should return?
↓
Was settlement actually executed?
↓
Can a wrong settlement be corrected
without deleting history?
CVCP treats value attribution as infrastructure rather than as a one-time payment calculation.
The protocol is designed around:
Origin
Trace
Attribution
Audit
Settlement
Correction
rather than around a single centralized authority.
The long-term objective is interoperability between systems that need to exchange verifiable value provenance and settlement evidence.
v0.5.0 — Reconciliation & Recovery
The current v0.5 schema and example suite validates successfully through the repository validation workflow.
The protocol now covers the full path from Origin through external settlement and post-settlement correction.
Value must be traceable when created, auditable when allocated, receipted when settled, and recoverable when wrong.