What is Attribution?
Attribution — The source-binding primitive that ties an agentic system's output back to the data, model, and decision that produced it.
Attribution is the primitive that answers where did this come from? for an autonomous system. As decisions move from humans to agents, every output needs a verifiable chain back to its source data, the model that produced it, and the policy that authorized it.
It is the layer every higher-order trust concept eventually grounds in — provenance, lineage, and governance all assume attribution underneath them.
Where attribution sits in the stack
In the four-layer architecture of the agentic web, attribution is a Substrate (L1) concept — it the cited foundation every layer grounds in. See the thesis for how the layers compound.
Attribution in the portfolio
357 positions in the Semantic Substrate portfolio carry the Attribution primitive — 56 available individually, 301 held as a coordinated set. Explore the Attribution cluster →
Quick answers
- What is Attribution in agentic systems?
- The source-binding primitive that ties an agentic system's output back to the data, model, and decision that produced it.
- Where does Attribution sit in the agentic stack?
- Attribution sits at the Substrate (L1) layer — it the cited foundation every layer grounds in.
- How many Attribution domain positions exist in the Semantic Substrate portfolio?
- 357 positions carry the Attribution primitive — 56 available individually, the rest held as a coordinated set.