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Preservation, acquisition and transformation provenance.
How NERVE retains originals byte-for-byte, records how each item was acquired, and keeps a readable account of every transformation that produced derived content.
Preservation
6 min
What is retained
NERVE retains the original item exactly as it was acquired. The bytes are not rewritten, re-encoded or cleaned. Each original is addressed by a cryptographic hash, so any later copy can be compared against the acquired form.
A canonical object is then created alongside the original. The original remains the reference point, the canonical object is a normalised view of it, and derived artefacts are clearly labelled as products of a transformation.
Acquisition provenance
Acquisition provenance answers how the item arrived. It records the source, the connector or import route used, the operator or workload identity responsible, and the time the item was collected. Collection time is recorded separately from the time the content itself describes.
Transformation provenance
Every derived artefact carries the tool that produced it, the version of that tool, and the parameters in force at the time. When a parser is upgraded, existing derived content is not silently replaced: a reprocessing run creates a new version, and earlier evidence references continue to resolve against the version they cited.
What provenance does not claim
Provenance is a record of handling inside the platform. It confirms that an original has not changed and explains how derived content was produced. It does not assert who authored the content, whether the content is accurate, or how the item was treated before acquisition.
Key points
Originals are retained unchanged and addressed by cryptographic hash.
Acquisition provenance records the source, the method and the time the item was collected.
Transformation provenance records the tool, the version and the parameters that produced each derived artefact.
A hash proves byte identity. It does not prove authorship or chain of custody outside the platform.
Where this stops
A hash confirms that bytes have not changed since acquisition. It does not establish who created the content, whether the content is truthful, or how the item was handled before NERVE received it.
Next
See the behaviour on your own material.
An evaluation runs NERVE against an approved sample in your environment, with the originals retained and every transformation recorded.