Confidence Model Spec

Purpose

Standardize how agents express certainty in results returned from KGCS traversals.

Scope

• Applies to orchestrator and all subagents.
• Output-only; no ontology changes.

Components

• value (0–1 float)
• basis (enum): COMPLETECHAIN, PARTIALCHAIN, SINGLEHOP, NOMATCH, VALIDATEDBYSHACL
• signals: rowcount, hopcount, templateused, shapevalidated (bool), freshness_days
• degradation: timeout, emptybranch, schemadrop

Computation

• Start at 1.0 for COMPLETE_CHAIN with SHACL validation and more than zero rows.
• Subtract 0.2 for each missing hop in the causal chain.
• Subtract 0.1 if freshness_days > 365.
• Floor at 0.0; cap at 1.0.

Output Example

{
  "value": 0.78,
  "basis": "COMPLETE_CHAIN",
  "signals": { "rows": 12, "hops": 4, "shape_validated": true, "freshness_days": 120 },
  "degradation": []
}

Governance

• Versioned model; changes require agent contract version bump.
• Logged with every response for audit.