Non-Determinism Contract

This system allows non-determinism only when it is declared, bounded, and approved by policy. If you want randomness, you must ask for it explicitly and stay inside the guardrails.

Allowed

• Declared non-determinism intent with a source, magnitude range, and justification.
• Declared entropy budgets that bound magnitude per source.
• Replay modes that state how divergence is evaluated (strict, bounded, observational).

Forbidden

• Entropy without a declared intent.
• Entropy sources not listed in the policy or budget.
• Entropy magnitudes outside the declared range.

Governance

• A non-determinism policy runs before execution.
• Policy violations hard-fail the run.
• Budget exhaustion triggers the configured action (halt, degrade, or mark non-certifiable).

Guarantees That Still Hold

• Dataset identity, plan hash, and environment fingerprints are enforced.
• Replay acceptability is still validated against declared thresholds.
• Determinism profiles and entropy records are persisted for audit.

Intentionally Not Guaranteed

• Bit-for-bit replay for flows that declare stochastic sources.
• Global determinism when any step opts into entropy.
• Replay acceptance without a policy that permits the observed variance.