Six steps. Each one gated, each one recorded.

Each step is gated, and each one is recorded. A review that cannot show how it reached its conclusion is of little use to the organisation relying on it.

Why the workflow is gated

Evidentiary review is cumulative: a mapping is only meaningful once ingestion is complete, and a consistency control is only meaningful once the mapping is stable. Gating the workflow prevents a conclusion from being formed on an incomplete base, and makes the state of the review legible at any point in time.

The six steps

1. Controlled Ingestion. Every document received is inventoried and fingerprinted on receipt, and recorded in the integrity register.
2. Documentary Mapping. Each material value is linked to the documents that support it, establishing what the record actually demonstrates.
3. Evidence & Consistency Controls. The structured control set is executed across and within the evidentiary domains.
4. Human Review Gates. Findings are reviewed by a person before the file advances; no status is assigned automatically.
5. Methodological Status. The observed state of the evidentiary environment is expressed as a defined status.
6. Locked Methodological Report. The deliverable is locked, timestamped and fingerprinted, with SHA-256 integrity recording.

Human review gates

Automated controls surface candidates; they do not conclude. A contradiction flagged by a control may reflect a genuine inconsistency in the file, or a limitation in the source material, or a legitimate explanation that exists outside the documents provided. Distinguishing between these is a judgement, and it is made by a reviewer.

This is why a file can carry the status Human review required. It is a real state of the workflow, not a placeholder.

Locking a report

A report that has not been locked is explicitly marked Not locked. Locking is the act that fixes the content of a deliverable and records its fingerprint, so that any later copy can be checked against the original. SHA-256 integrity recording is systematic and not optional.