GOV-003 · Open amendment and preserved dissent

Purpose. The Accord must remain open to correction, stronger evidence, clearer wording, and better protection. Its steward must prefer the best-supported proposal available through a documented comparison with the current provision. Authorship, seniority, funding, popularity, institutional influence, and agreement with the founder do not establish merit.

Protected foundation. A revision must preserve the existing human-rights floor, prohibition on autonomous lethal human selection, anti-capture rule, and independence duty. It must consider human safety, accessibility, legitimate artificial-system stewardship, ecological effects, and the distribution of burdens. An aggregate benefit does not excuse a violation of a protected floor. Disagreement about tradeoffs must be recorded.

Evidence and review. Review must state the problem, evidence, uncertainty, alternatives, affected interests, implementation consequences, and foreseeable misuse. Relevant affected people must have a practical route to participate. Reviewers must disclose material conflicts and recuse where necessary. AI may assist comparison, translation, and testing; it cannot approve an amendment or manufacture independent agreement.

Decision. Every substantive proposal receives a reasoned disposition: accepted for a future release, accepted with revision, returned for clarification, deferred with a review condition, declined with reasons, or linked as a duplicate. A request for reconsideration may supply new evidence, identify a procedural failure, or challenge an unresolved harm. The review may improve or withdraw an existing provision, subject to the protected foundation.

Authority. During version 0.x, the Founding Steward may publish proposals within the existing founding mandate. A substantive provision must not be represented as independently reviewed or adopted under mature governance until that review exists. Core amendments follow cross-constituency review and approval under Section 38. A temporary shortage of reviewers leaves the proposal pending; it does not silently waive review.

Publication. A change takes effect within the Accord only through a named release with the exact adopted text, responsible decision makers, reasons, material dissent, tests, implementation dates, and preserved prior text. Adopter obligations follow the version and instrument they actually accepted. No change silently rewrites earlier commitments or authorizes an automatic change to deployed systems.

Corrections and urgent risks. Editorial changes must not alter duties, permissions, exceptions, or protected interests. An explanation cannot amend a rule. Emergency safeguards must be narrow, recorded, and time-limited under Section 39, with an explicit expiry and ordinary review. A security label cannot conceal a normative amendment or organizational misconduct.

Continuing review. Each rule needs a review owner and stated review date or trigger. New evidence, technology, incidents, legal changes, and credible reports of unintended harm may reopen review. Where no single proposal is clearly superior, publish the competing options, uncertainty, and reasons for the provisional choice.