vMEM (Versioned Markdown Entity Manifest): A Declared Interface for Entity Scope, Versioning, and Replay
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: As AI systems transition from passive retrieval toward agentic and decision-adjacent operation, the cost of interpretation, attribution ambiguity, and lack of replayable provenance have become material operational concerns. This paper introduces vMEM (Versioned Markdown Entity Manifest), a minimal, declarative interface for publishing entity identity, scope, authoritative references, and change history in a human- and machine-readable Markdown format. vMEM is designed to externalize interpretation costs while preserving versioning, explicit exclusion signaling, and time-bound reconstruction of declared entity state. It is not a ranking signal, compliance mechanism, or governance framework. This paper defines the structure, non-goals, and motivating conditions of vMEM as a foundational semantic declaration artifact.
Author: MacFarland, Anthony
Language: English
Topic: Data Quality and Management
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7128407159
FWCI:
Cites:
Cited by:
Related to: