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In plain terms: Before any document is used, L0 decides who issued it, how much authority it carries, what version it is, which yard owns it, and who is allowed to see it. Nothing gets used until it passes through here.

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What it does

L0 defines the trust, authority, version, access rights, and ownership of every before it enters the system. An ABS Rules PDF, a USCG section, a yard’s internal standard, a prior vessel’s drawing package, a vendor datasheet, and a research dataset all enter here and get tagged first. This is the first layer because rule authority, version, ownership, and licensing determine what the system is allowed to trust, cite, retrieve, and export.

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Source roles

Source typeRoleHow Forge handles it
ABS Rules and GuidesAuthority-bearing engineering rulesUsed as structured rules, not generic PDFs; rule version and effective date tracked
USCG CFRRegulatory requirementsApplied with filters for vessel type, service, flag, tonnage, and operating context
Prior vessel recordsEvidence (precedent)Available for retrieval but never sufficient on their own to authorize a decision
Research datasets, vendor papersReferenceUseful for context, never sufficient for a decision

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What L0 outputs

Every source leaves L0 tagged with:
  • source_id
  • authority_level (authority / evidence / reference)
  • rule_version_id
  • tenant_id (which yard owns it)
  • doc_type, market_sector, topic
  • access_policy

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Why it is first

If you do not know what a document is and how much it can be trusted before you reason over it, every downstream conclusion is suspect. L0 makes trust an explicit, recorded property of every input, which is what lets later layers cite sources with confidence. Related: Sources vs. Decisions.