ADR 0245: The receipt becomes the proof

Status: accepted

Since ADR 0114, the gate's minted record — the versioned envelope tying a green run to one exact tree — has been the receipt. ADR 0120 reviewed the whole verb surface and left the name standing.

Three pressures reopened it. The brand direction judged "receipt" wrong as a public word: transactional, waste-associated, the slip you discard. Banning a word from marketing while it names the most-shared artifact the product mints splits the vocabulary. The split already exists in the tree: the desk's tips say "passing proof" while the feature canon says receipt — a live synonym pair the one-name-per-concept rule forbids. And v1.0.0 ships the envelope as a signature-ready public contract. After launch the name lives in schemas and git notes, and a rename becomes the expensive walk-back the verb canon pre-empted. Before launch it costs about an hour.

The record is the proof. The family serves every register the name must hold:

• the gate proves the tree
• a green tree stands proven
• ungated work stays unproven
• the artifact is a proof, plural proofs
• the one-line form is the proof line

One name everywhere: CLI and MCP surfaces, the result envelope and schemas, the feature canon and glossary, docs, marketing. Per the verb canon's alias policy, no legacy aliases: the retired spelling hard-errors with a one-line redirect naming the successor. The guard matches product surfaces, not English prose.

Two disciplines attach to the word:

• Proof attaches to the work, never to the worker. Copy and product strings say "the change lands proven", never "make the agent prove it". The verifier frame retired by ADR 0244 must not re-enter through the new noun.
• The canonical sense owns the word. In docs, loose idiomatic uses ("proof that this works") yield to precise alternatives, so the glossary term stays exact.

The explicit noes: "attestation" is not a second name for the artifact — docs may say once that proofs function as attestations for supply chain audiences — and "receipt" survives nowhere as an alias.

• The rename sweep executes pre-launch across engine, schemas, canon, docs, and marketing. The unlanded envelope branch is re-briefed against this record rather than landed and renamed; the owner is coordinating that sequencing.
• The receipt-family decisions take one-line amendment notes when the sweep lands. The notes follow the verb canon's pointer-refresh discipline, and their reasoning stays intact. ADR 0120's line keeping the receipt name carries its amendment note now.
• The desk's "passing proof" strings become canonical instead of divergent.
• Marketing gains the artifact word: "you don't ship trust, you ship proof" now names the thing the product mints.
• "Proof" is common in technical prose, so holding the canonical sense costs ongoing editorial attention — the accepted price of a name that works in every register.

• hallmark — the richest story: assaying is the same conceptual system as standards (a declared standard, an independent test, a mark struck on the artifact), and it verbs well ("hallmarked at green"). Rejected: for much of the audience the dominant association is the American greeting-card company, and the everyday idiom ("a hallmark of good design") would make canon discipline expensive.
• attestation — precise, and the supply chain ecosystem's own term (in-toto, SLSA). Rejected as the product noun: corporate-cold on marketing surfaces and clunky at a prompt. One compatibility sentence in docs captures the value.
• seal · stamp · warrant · certificate — each fails a register: "sealed" reads as closed; a stamp is approval without scrutiny; a warrant threatens; a certificate smells of X.509.
• Keeping receipt — plain, and internet vernacular ("bring the receipts") even means evidence. Rejected: the primary sense stays transactional, the brand may not lean on the word, and a name marketing cannot speak splits the canon the moment proofs reach shared surfaces.