One rule above all: never call unfinished work finished.
The method here isn't invented from scratch. It adopts and extends the controlled vocabulary already verified inside the shipped Odisena Living Chronicle — a scheme purpose-built by the same imprint for exactly this problem, already tested against a real correction cycle.
Three labels, defined precisely
Status can only move forward when a Structural Editor or Provenance Archivist can point to a specific, currently-inspected source file that justifies the move. It can move backward at any time if a source is found unverifiable or contradicted.
Live & reviewable
You may say: "a living, hourly-reviewed preview edition."
You may not say: "the final edition" or "this book is complete."
Material exists, no book
You may say: "source material reviewed; no finished book exists yet."
You may not say: "[Work] is a book" or promise a publish date without a dated source.
Placeholder only
You may say: "a placeholder awaiting intake."
You may not say: any substantive claim about content, quality, or scope.
Four gates, sequential and additive
A work cannot skip a gate, and passing a gate never erases the record of the prior review. A work can sit indefinitely at any gate — that is not a defect.
Intake
Source material is collected, snapshotted, and matched against dedupe rules. Cannot pass if the source can't be directly inspected, or is a second-hand description rather than the source itself.
Structural Edit
A Structural Editor logs chapter order, register labeling, and speculative flags. Cannot pass if any chapter lacks a kind, register, or speculative classification.
Rights & Legal
A rights question packet is filed and outside counsel responds. Cannot pass if any ISBN, copyright, trademark, or entity claim is made without counsel sign-off.
Publication Lock
The Publisher signs off that catalog entry, catalog row, and every public claim are consistent and status-accurate. Cannot pass if the work's real-world state contradicts the catalog's claim.
Confidence, status, and register
Confidence (claim strength)
Event status (fact lifecycle)
documented · proposed · designed · deployed · funded · validated · built
Register (narrative mode)
narration — story-voice prose. ledger — explicit factual audit-trail prose.
Speculative & future material
Any content describing a work's future — sequels, unreleased chapters, planned features — is labeled with the speculative/proposed vocabulary and is never counted in a work's canon chapter count or completion metrics unless already delivered and directly inspected. In the Living Chronicle, chapters 36–44 carry the Projection flag and must retain it wherever referenced.
"Speculative future chapters are NOT recorded as events."
— From the verified timeline dataset's own header. A timeline of documented events excludes forward-looking narrative, even when that narrative exists in the same manuscript.
Non-book creative works
Works that aren't books — like the music album Creating Love at the End of the Beginning of the World — are excluded from the book library proper but cross-referenced wherever the same imprint or chapter narratively describes them. That album is tracked as music, not a book, and points to chapter 17 of the Living Chronicle.
First-party sources are not self-corroborating
A claim appearing in a first-party source about itself is not, by itself, sufficient to promote that claim to "verified fact." Independent corroboration is required. When Odisena's own /about page repeated an unverified biographical claim, the record moved it only "one notch" in provenance strength — not to verified fact.
No legal advice in editorial material
This policy governs narrative and factual labeling only. Any question touching copyright, fair use, defamation risk, trademark, or entity structure is out of scope for editorial staff and routes to the counsel-review gate. Editorial staff describe facts; they do not issue legal conclusions.