Inventions tour

What this page is

A short index of Corvid’s load-bearing language inventions. Each invention has a runnable demo through corvid tour --topic <name>, a catalog entry in docs/reference/inventions.md, a spec link, and tests.

The six headline inventions

1. Compile-time approvals

Dangerous tool calls without approve do not compile. The token is lexically scoped, structural, and adversarially tested.

corvid tour --topic approve-gates

2. Grounded provenance types

Grounded<T> is a different type than T. The compiler refuses silent unwrap; the audit log records every explicit unwrap.

corvid tour --topic grounded-provenance

3. Compile-time budgets

@budget($X) is a real ceiling. The compiler computes worst-case cost across the agent’s call graph and refuses to emit if the composition exceeds the budget.

corvid tour --topic compile-time-budgets

4. Confidence gates

Effect rows carry confidence; composed agent confidence below a threshold can be configured to escalate or refuse.

corvid tour --topic confidence-gates

5. Strict citations

A model output that should be backed by a citation cannot be passed to a downstream prompt without one. The grounded type and the citation metadata enforce it.

corvid tour --topic strict-citations

6. Replay and receipts

Every agent run produces a deterministic trace. corvid replay reproduces it byte-for-byte. corvid eval --swap-model <m> diffs the new model’s behavior against the baseline. Receipts are signed via DSSE.

corvid tour --topic replay-receipts

The full catalog

corvid tour --list prints every shipped invention. docs/reference/inventions.md is the proof matrix: per-invention shipped status, runnable command, test coverage, spec link, explicit non-scope.