Provenance

also known as: observed vs inferred

The record of how a capture was acquired and how each claim about it is known. Observed facts are read directly from the surface; inferred ones are estimates and must be flagged as such with a confidence score, a UI model label is never silently equated with an official model ID. Provenance covers login state, region requested versus effective, and whether the surface was present at all.

In AI Search API

provenance is a required Envelope section: a driver structurally cannot return a capture without one. model carries { providerId, observedLabel, inferred, confidence } so attribution guesses are visible; region records requested vs effective; loginState and surfacePresent record how and whether the surface answered. What was seen and what was guessed stay distinguishable forever.

Envelope, model provenance, observed

"provenance": {
  "model": {
    "providerId": "gpt-4o-2024-08-06",
    "observedLabel": "GPT-4o",
    "inferred": false,
    "confidence": 0.99
  },
  "region": { "requested": "US", "effective": "US" }
}

Related terms

See it in the product

Every definition here is enforced in the Envelope contract. Run a capture and read the fields yourself.

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