Philosophy — Seven Coordinates¶
An incident cannot be truthfully described in four dimensions.
Four dimensions — three of space, one of time — capture where and when. They do not capture:
- Why the actor acted
- What propagated downstream
- Where the actor sits in the causal and reporting chain
A complete incident record exhibits all seven coordinates. A record that omits any of them is partial — and a partial record is not a truthful record.
The seven coordinates¶
The record space is the fiber bundle E = B × F5 × F6 × F7:
| Coordinate | Name | Captured by |
|---|---|---|
| B0–B3 | Spacetime | timestamp, actor, source |
| F5 | Intention | Decision.rationale |
| F6 | Effect | Decision.effect_artifacts |
| F7 | Lineage | Decision.predecessor + successors |
Total dimension: 7.
What enforces the philosophy¶
The check_7d_completeness() gate. Every logged evidence and every
logged decision is checked against the seven-coordinate schema. If
any coordinate is empty, the gate fails and reports which record and
which coordinate.
Why the framework separates three things¶
Most incident-response models conflate:
- Individual responsibility — what a specific actor chose
- Extended influence — what effects propagated from that choice
- Total unveiling — whether the full record can be reconstructed
Heptagon separates them mathematically:
- Responsibility is diagonal: each actor is accountable only for their own choices.
- Influence is non-diagonal: effects cross actor boundaries.
- Unveiling is a flabbiness condition: every local section must extend to the global record, or the record is incomplete.
What the philosophy is not¶
It is not physics. It is not theology. The mathematics is a language for meaning, not a claim about the unseen.
The philosophy is a schema: a specification of what a complete record must contain. The framework either enforces that schema or it does not. When it does, "complete" means something. When it does not, "complete" is decoration.
Heptagon enforces the schema.