v0.2.1 · WORKING DRAFT APACHE 2.0 TWO PROFILES PUBLISHED

LIA

An open specification for treating reasoning as durable infrastructure.

INPUT L1 PERCEPTION L2 CLASSIFICATION & ROUTING L3 REASONING & EXECUTION L4 OUTPUT & FEEDBACK OUTPUT cio routing_decision execution_result feedback_signal

Most AI forgets how it decided. LIA is the contract for systems that don't.

Most current AI integrations conflate distinct concerns into single opaque components. Reasoning, retrieval, validation, orchestration, and human review collapse into one prompt and one model call. The result is systems that are brittle at the edges and expensive at scale. When an answer is wrong, there's no way to tell whether the failure came from what was retrieved, what was inferred, or what was invented.

LIA defines deliberate seams between concerns, so brittleness is detected early, cost is controlled at the routing layer, and the system's reasoning can be inspected, evaluated, and improved over time. It is a contract, not a library.

ACCUMULATED, NOT DISCARDED
ARCHITECTURE

Four layers. Four contracts.

Each layer accepts a structured object from the layer above and produces one for the layer below. The contracts are the protocol: two implementations that emit the same contracts can swap internals freely.

CanonicalInputObject RoutingDecision ExecutionResult FeedbackSignal

The formal JSON Schema definitions, with validated examples, live in /schemas. They are the canonical, machine-validatable definition of what a conformant implementation must emit at each boundary.

"routing_decision": {
  "trace_id": "9f2c…",
  "route": "known_complex",
  "tier": "frontier",
  "evaluators": {
    "precedent": 0.31,
    "complexity": 0.78,
    "risk": 0.64
  },
  "thresholds_version": "2026.06",
  "latency_budget_ms": 20000,
  "checkpoint_required": false
}
TRIMMED FOR ILLUSTRATION · SCHEMAS GOVERN
NODE TYPES

Every component is exactly one of five things.

1
Retrieval
Fetches things and returns them with provenance. It never rewrites, summarises, or decides.
2
Reasoning
Inference, in the current generation typically a language model call. One node, one declared purpose.
3
Logic
Deterministic code. If correctness is non-negotiable, it belongs here, never in a prompt.
4
Orchestration
The state machine or graph that sequences the other nodes. It coordinates; it never does the work itself.
5
Human Checkpoint
A designed pause with a defined trigger and a captured decision, not a catch block that pages someone.

A component that mixes types is non-conformant, because a component that both retrieves and reasons can't be tested, priced, or replaced independently.

A SYSTEM YOU ALREADY RUN

One prompt. Four jobs.

Take the most common AI system in production today: a retrieval-augmented support bot with one prompt and one model call.

system_prompt.txt
You are a support assistant.
Answer from the retrieved context.
Cite your sources.
Do not invent policies.
If you are unsure, refuse.
If the customer is angry, escalate.
REASONING
LOGIC
ROUTING
HUMAN CHECKPOINT
THE SAME SIX LINES, TYPED

Reasoning, logic, routing, and a human checkpoint, fused into a single call. When it breaks, you can't say which part failed. The primer reads this exact system through the framework and shows the five bounded changes that fix it.

Read the worked example

CONFORMANCE

Three levels, self-declared.

LEVEL 1

Structural

All four layers exist with correct boundary contracts. Node types are correctly classified. A profile is declared. Trace is emitted.

LEVEL 2

Operational

Level 1 plus a functioning closed loop with declared feedback contracts, externalised routing thresholds, and complete observability.

LEVEL 3

Calibrated

Level 2 plus calibrated confidence aggregation, versioned thresholds, documented loop effectiveness, and a published profile test suite.

Implementations declare the level they claim and the profile they conform to. Conformance test documentation is planned; the levels are normative in the base specification today.

PROFILES

The base defines what never varies. Profiles define what does.

Routes, evaluators beyond the required three, tier taxonomies, output shapes, and feedback semantics are domain decisions. A profile makes them for one domain.

PUBLISHED · v0.1.0

Support

The Resolution Atlas

Customer support AI, with institutional resolution patterns treated as load-bearing infrastructure, not informal practice. Read the profile

PUBLISHED · v0.1.0

Research

The Evidence Graph

Investigative reasoning held as a revisable body of claims and evidence, where confidence moves in both directions. Read the profile

FORTHCOMING

Creative

The Creative Genome

Creative AI products, with individual creative reasoning specified, refined through feedback, and, where appropriate, licensed. Contributed separately.

"Creative Genome" is a trademark in formation held by DREAMVISION AI. When the Creative Profile is published, its conceptual structure will be open under Apache 2.0 and freely implementable; the term itself is reserved as a product designation. New profiles for other domains are welcome; discuss yours in an issue before drafting.

DOCUMENTS

Read in the order that fits your purpose.

START-HERE.md
Reading paths by purpose: builder, evaluator, profile author, curious.
PRIMER.md
Plain-language terms, a worked example on a standard RAG bot, seven anti-patterns, a control-systems mapping.
SPECIFICATION.md
The base contract: layers, node types, schemas, failure semantics, versioning, conformance.
profiles/
Support and Research, each with its position-claim and a cross-comparison.
schemas/
JSON Schema (Draft 2020-12) for the four contracts, with validated examples.
ESSAY-launch.md
The introduction: why reasoning patterns are first-class infrastructure.
CONTRIBUTE

It's a working draft, which means parts of it are wrong.

Find them. Open an issue where the specification seems wrong or unclear. Accepted corrections are credited by name. Profile authorship is open; the base specification is editorially controlled.

Colombo, Ila. LIA Protocol: An open specification for treating reasoning as durable infrastructure. Version 0.2.1. 2026.

Open the repository