Policies and Rubrics
Definition
A Policy is a reusable statement of expected specialist AI behavior. Its applicability explains the situations in which the rule controls. A Rubric is an evaluation criterion that turns the policy into observable evidence for a case and candidate response.
Correctness Governance owns both artifact types. Expert Contributions can supply proposed or accepted policy and rubric material, while the governance surfaces preserve the artifact's current state, links, activity, and provenance.
Fields, states, or lifecycle rules
- Policies have identity, descriptive rule content, scope or applicability, linked cases, linked rubrics, activity, and approval context.
- Rubrics have identity, criterion wording, policy or case relationships, evaluation relevance, and lifecycle context.
- A policy can connect to several rubrics when its behavior requirements need separate checks.
- A rubric should express one inspectable criterion wherever independent diagnosis matters.
- Linked cases demonstrate applicability or behavior; benchmark dataset membership remains a separate benchmark-scoped decision.
- Proposed applications and agent suggestions remain proposals until the owning workflow records acceptance.
- Expert contribution provenance should remain visible when contributed material becomes a governed artifact.
- Editing a project-level standard does not retroactively change the standard boundary used by an already recorded Run.
Read the rule, state, links, and owner together; a plausible title alone does not establish governed authority.
Reading the pair
Begin with the policy when deciding what should happen and why. Inspect applicability before assuming the policy governs a case. Then read the linked rubric as the testable question applied to candidate behavior. If the rubric cannot be answered from the response and visible case evidence, revise the criterion or the case rather than relying on reviewer intuition.
When standards overlap, distinguish complementary criteria from contradictory authority. Preserve unresolved conflict until an accountable expert contribution or governance action settles the intended rule.
Worked example
Example: escalation policy and rubrics
A policy states that unresolved eligibility exceptions must be escalated. One rubric checks that the response does not promise the exception; another checks that it gives the correct escalation path. Separating the checks lets an evaluation show whether a candidate avoided the unsupported promise but still failed to guide the user correctly.
Source confidence
Code-backed: active policy and rubric detail routes expose linked cases, linked rubrics, approval and activity context, and evaluation relationships. Exact editable fields can vary by artifact state.