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Version: v0.9.0a2
Spec

Spec-08-Quarantine-Garden

3 min readSpec contributor · Node operatorDraft · v0.9.0aN

What this spec defines

Quarantine garden behavior — isolating facts from low-trust or failed-validation sources before they reach the main recall surface.

Extraction status

This file contains the ADR-010 prose extraction for quarantine semantics. General garden ACL is owned by Spec-02-Scopes-and-ACL; federation source trust is owned by Spec-05-Federation-Trust; route shape is owned by Spec-03-HTTP-API.

Purpose

Quarantine is a safety boundary.

A fact that cannot be trusted enough for normal ingest may still be worth retaining for moderator review. Instead of silently discarding it or admitting it into the main fabric, the node routes it to a designated quarantine garden.

Quarantine admission

A node MAY quarantine inbound facts when:

Low source-trust score

Below the configured admission threshold.

Missing or invalid source attestation

Sanitizer policy selects quarantine mode

Federation validation flag

Reviewable but non-fatal issue.

Operator policy

Explicitly routes a source to quarantine.

Facts admitted to quarantine MUST carry enough metadata to explain the admission reason.

Quarantine garden requirements

A quarantine garden is a Memory Garden with quarantine behavior enabled. It MUST retain normal garden ACL properties and add a moderator role.

QuarantineRole = "admin" | "quarantine:moderator" | "writer" | "reader"

Promotion and rejection require admin or quarantine:moderator in the quarantine garden.

Fact state

Quarantined facts SHOULD record:

quarantine_garden_id: UUID
quarantine_status: "pending" | "promoted" | "rejected"
quarantine_reason: string
source_trust: number?

Pending quarantined facts MUST NOT appear in normal recall/query results.

Unless the caller explicitly queries the quarantine surface and has permission.

Promote

Promotion moves a pending fact out of quarantine and into either the main fabric or a target garden. Promotion MUST record who promoted the fact, when, and why. Promoting an already promoted or rejected fact MUST return a conflict response.

Promotion MUST re-check target garden scope and write permissions before moving the fact.

Reject

Rejection permanently marks a quarantined fact as rejected. Rejection MUST record who rejected the fact, when, and why. Rejected facts remain available for audit to authorized quarantine moderators, but MUST NOT enter normal recall.

Deletion guard

A quarantine garden with pending facts MUST NOT be deleted. The node must require moderation of pending facts before deleting the garden container.

Audit

Nodes SHOULD audit:

Quarantine admission

Promotion

Rejection

Deletion blocked by pending facts

Attempts to moderate without required role

Audit record shape belongs to Spec-09-Audit-Log.

Out of scope

This spec does not define source-trust formula details, source attestation, sanitizer pattern catalogues, or advanced Memory Garden ACL behavior.