Evidence Providers

What an Evidence Provider is

An Evidence Provider attaches governed evidence to a Decision Record. It is not a Model Provider (it supplies no intelligence) and not an Integration (it executes no side effects). It supplies one thing: what was true, from a governed source, at the moment it informed the decision — frozen into an immutable snapshot the record carries forever.

Two archetypes:

1Semantic evidence     →  governed definitions from your warehouse and BI stack
2                          (e.g. Snowflake semantic views, Looker explores)
3Operational evidence  →  live readings from fleet and field systems
4                          (e.g. Samsara telemetry at decision time)

Three properties make this different from linking to a dashboard:

• Frozen at capture. The Decision Record holds the value, definition, source, and timestamp as they were when the decision was made — not a link that may have changed since. The vendor UI remains an optional live surface; the record is the frozen one.
• Qualification is inherited, never asserted. How governed a definition is, how attestable its provenance, how fresh the reading — these come from the source's own mapping, not from whoever built the loop.
• Conformance is verifiable. The provider contract and conformance suite live in Boss Loops OSS, so "every evidence source in this decision conformed to the contract" is a statement an auditor can check — not a marketing claim.

Status legend

| Badge | Meaning | |---|---| | Preview | A fixture/seed illustrates the architecture on the demo Decision Record; not a live vendor connection | | Contract-validated | The evidence shape passes the OSS contract exemplars and conformance checks | | Conformant Provider | Future — a production adapter that passes the public OSS conformance suite | | Boss Loops Cloud | Future hosted connector path, managed auth included |

Looker — semantic evidence (Preview)

Approvers see a number in Slack; nobody remembers which Explore, which band, as of when. With Looker as an Evidence Provider, the certified metric definition travels with the decision: the demo Alpine invoice record carries vendor spend vs. a 12-month band as a preview snapshot — definition, value, and qualification frozen on the record.

Today: preview snapshot on the Alpine demo Decision Record. It illustrates qualification inherited from the provider — not asserted by the loop. There is no live Looker API connection yet.

Next: a live connector with LookML mapping, an optional rendered tile, and two-clock freshness (when the value was bound vs. when it was observed).

Snowflake — semantic evidence (Planned)

Warehouse truth exists; decisions happen in email with screenshots and stale exports. With Snowflake as an Evidence Provider, governed semantic views become Evidence Snapshots with lineage and qualification.

Today: the evidence shape is contract-validated in Boss Loops OSS (governed semantic metric exemplar); a reference JSON provider exercises it. There is no live warehouse connection on the demo.

Next: a production semantic provider for semantic views and governed metrics. Ad-hoc SQL stays unreviewed — it must not map to governed. We document the governed path first.

Samsara — operational evidence (Planned)

Operational decisions need what was true on the ground — not a dashboard someone refreshed later. With Samsara as an Evidence Provider, telemetry is captured at decision time, with provenance up to origin-attested where hardware and process support it.

Today: the evidence shapes are contract-validated in Boss Loops OSS (telemetry and origin-attested exemplars). There is no live fleet connection on the demo. Operational evidence is captured, not streamed as a live widget on the record.

Next: a production operational provider with real-time freshness and origin attestation where warranted.

Where the line sits (OSS vs. hosted)

The contract, reference providers, and conformance suite are open in Boss Loops OSS — you can validate an evidence shape and verify the invariants yourself. Production adapters (managed auth, live vendor connections, full qualification presentation) ship in the hosted tier. Consuming your existing semantics — not re-modeling them — is the point: Boss Loops opens what Looker, Snowflake, and Samsara already govern; it does not replace them.