Reasoning by Way of Receipts

Modern computational systems record extensive traces while rarely binding a state transition to the authority, jurisdiction, criteria, evidence, and verification under which that transition acquires standing. Logs describe events, traces reconstruct flows, and metrics summarize outcomes, but these artifacts do not by themselves establish whether an action was admissible, whether its reported effect occurred, or what downstream reliance the result may legitimately support. This paper introduces reasoning by way of receipts: a model of governed computation in which an epistemic or operational proposal may enter canonical state only through a typed, lineage-bearing receipt protocol. A receipt is not itself truth, proof, or complete explanation. It is an inspectable commitment linking a proposal, governing specification, jurisdiction, authority context, decision, observed effect, evidence, verification result, predecessor state, and permitted standing. We distinguish decision, refusal, effect, verification, promotion, and revision receipts and specify the conditions under which they may compose into a justification graph. The resulting model separates physical execution from constitutional recognition. An effect may occur without acquiring governed standing, while refusal, hold, escalation, and non-decision remain valid receipted outcomes. This distinction connects semantic ingress, epistemic promotion, reality-touching capability, governed memory, and institutional action within a common transition grammar. The contribution is not the claim that receipts eliminate interpretation. It is that receipts can bind the materials, authority, and limits of interpretation closely enough for justification to become reconstructable, contestable, and revisable rather than merely narrated after the fact.