Governance statements

A reason is required, and a statement whose reasons are missing is not published. One or two sentences: long enough to say what was decided and on what grounds, short enough that nine read as a set rather than an appendix.

It is never behind a disclosure, never in a tooltip and never after the table. The reason sits on the row it explains, because a ceiling alone reads as a number and invites a reader to mistake a permission for a practice. The reasoning is the only thing on the page that shows a decision was taken rather than a default accepted.

A ceiling states the most AI involvement an organisation deems acceptable for a kind of work. It does not say how much that organisation uses, and most work sits below its ceiling.

The framework's own site scored Considerable against a ceiling of Extensive. That gap is the normal case rather than an embarrassment, and reading a ceiling as a practice is the misreading the reasons exist to prevent.

Typical and maximum. What an organisation ordinarily does, and the most it permits. Each is labelled on its own line, because a row reading "typically Limited, up to Moderate" assumes the reader already knows what a ceiling is, and the reason both values are stated is that a maximum on its own was being read as a description of practice.

The maximum is the position. The typical is a description. Only the maximum is ever breached: work above what an organisation usually does is work that used more AI than usual, which is not a breach of anything.

Both sit on one rail. Filled to the typical, outlined from there to the maximum, and the run of outlined slots is the distance between what an organisation does and what it permits. A statement whose typical sits at its maximum is an organisation working at its own limit, and one with four outlined slots has left itself room it does not use. Neither is legible from two band names.

A stated typical says it was stated. Once the member application can count an organisation's own disclosures, an observed one says how many it was counted from, and the evidence sits in the same row as the permission. Nothing else about the row changes, because the difference between the two is where the value came from.

In the organisation's own words, one or two sentences, sitting with the ceiling they qualify and in the same place as the reason. "Illustrated treatments applied to our own photography are permitted and labelled as illustration."

An exception is a stated qualification rather than a category. The framework does not offer a list of exception types to pick from: those are unbounded, every organisation wants different ones, and a framework cannot ratify what it cannot maintain.

So an exception is checked by a reader rather than by a machine, which is true of the reasons too. It qualifies the position and it never changes a verdict.

Work above a ceiling, or outside a depiction condition, breaches the organisation's own position. The band stands as calculated, the code is unchanged and the points are unchanged, because a policy cannot retrospectively change a fact about a deliverable.

A breach resolves in one of two ways: the work changes, or the position changes in a new version of the statement. Contract section 3 settles it, and it is what keeps a ceiling from becoming a second scale.