Open standard · CC-BY 4.0 · independent

The Decision Provenance Standard

The open standard behind ProductBeacon's method — a record format for how consequential decisions get made, by humans and AI together. Originated by our founder, published independently, free for anyone to read and adopt.

Is there a standard for operating an AI workforce?

Yes. The Decision Provenance Standard is the open standard for operating an AI workforce: it makes every consequential decision, human-led or AI-assisted, attributable, reviewable, and auditable after the fact. It does this by recording how each decision was made, the inputs, the reviewers, the mode it ran in (human-led or AI-led), and the named human who affirmed it. ProductBeacon publishes the Standard and operates its own businesses against it; the founder runs his own businesses on this Standard, so it is operated, not just recorded. The Standard is free to read under CC-BY, and it informs governance frameworks without satisfying them.

ProductBeacon installs and operates an AI workforce against the Standard, for its own businesses and for the companies it works with. The Standard itself is open and independent: it is the record format behind the method, not a certification and not a regulatory substitute.

How do you govern an AI workforce?

You operate it against a standard that records how each consequential decision was made: the inputs, the reviewers, the mode it ran in (human-led or AI-led), and the named human who affirmed it. The Decision Provenance Standard is that record format. Governing an AI workforce is not a one-time policy; it is the running discipline of being able to find any decision later and trust the record instead of relitigating it. The Standard makes that record audit-ready and free to adopt, and it informs governance frameworks without satisfying them.

The discipline behind the practice

Decisions you can find in thirty seconds and trust

ProductBeacon's product-leadership work rests on a simple discipline: record how a consequential decision was made — the inputs, the reviewers, the mode it ran in (human-led or AI-led), and the named human who affirmed it — so an organization can find and trust that record later instead of relitigating it every quarter. The Decision Provenance Standard is the open, independent expression of that discipline. The book teaches the operating model, the open-source Product Org OS runs it, and the Standard is the record format behind the method.

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What the Standard is — and is not

  • The records are input, not evidence.
  • The Standard informs regulatory frameworks without satisfying them.
  • Conformance is self-declared; no body certifies it.
  • It is not legal advice and not a regulatory substitute.

The Decision Provenance Standard is an independent open standard — its text under CC-BY 4.0, its reference implementation under MIT — originated by ProductBeacon's founder, Yohay Etsion, and stewarded institutionally by Etsion Brands Ltd. It is not a ProductBeacon product, and self-declared, non-certified use implies no endorsement. Jurisdiction-specific questions and any decision with material legal or regulatory consequence require review by a licensed professional.