Delivery custody is a named chain, not one vendor field
Answers Topology · Identity · Modality · Epistemology
Channel, Surface, Technology Platform and Vendor answer four different questions: the manner of reaching someone, the place it happens, the system that acts there, and the party accountable for it. Custody is asserted directly at each link. A surface names the systems it runs on, and no custody is inferred through any of them: the vendor supplying a platform is not thereby the provider of the surface, even where the platform hosts it.
What goes wrong without it
Reaching someone involves several parties, and a single vendor field forces four questions into one answer: the manner of reaching them, the place it happens, the system that acts there, and who is accountable for it. The advertising industry built supply-chain disclosure precisely because an unstated intermediary is where accountability disappears.
What proves it — 1
Each is a gate the build runs: a check inside a ring, a whole ring, or an eval beside them. A build stops at the first that refuses.
- registry integritytyped relationships
Every relationship has declared endpoint kinds and a governed cardinality.
Derived from — 2
Kinds it licenses
Relationships it licenses
includes surface · provided by · supplied by · delivers in · delivered on · runs on
Where this model stands
Each custody link is asserted where it is known, and no link is derived from another.
A platform names at most one supplying vendor.
A content type is asserted against the surfaces that carry it, so delivery place is stated rather than implied by channel.
A Vendor or Technology Platform states the public reference that establishes the identity it stands on, which is what a world record is admitted by; the build rejects one that does not, and any other kind that claims one.
The role a platform plays at a surface is read from what the platform publicly is, which is what admits it: an analytics product instruments, a personalisation product personalises, a messaging or ad-serving product delivers, a media platform hosts. One verb, uses platform, once spanned all four and could say none of them; four role verbs then said them and were filled on one to three surfaces of fifteen, so a surface now names the systems it runs on, once each, and the role is read from the platform (RUL-047).
RUL-012