The TLTE Method: Citation-Tier, Mirror-Publish, and Graduation-Gate Protocols for Civic Archives on Contested Histories

We document a civic-archive method, in production use at docs.tlte.cloud, that combines three named protocols: (1) a four-tier source discipline that treats the archive itself as a route rather than a source; (2) a Mirror-Publish protocol that strips the archive of any "trusted reporter" role with accountability bodies; and (3) a Graduation-Gate logic that forbids opening operational surfaces (intake, naming, hosted testimony) until six binary preconditions close in public.

We accompany the method with a reproducible benchmark (VINMIN-Bench) for grounded-AI evaluation on contested historical narratives — 46+ cases across must-refuse, must-answer, must-route, and must-disambiguate categories — an append-only continuity log with anti-fraud hash-chain verification, and a permanent-identifier citation registry of 100+ Tier-A anchors.

We argue the method generalises beyond Tamil-Eelam transitional-justice work to any contested-corpus civic archive that must remain falsifiable under hostile reading. Comparative transferability is tested against Bosnia (Srebrenica), Rohingya (Myanmar), and Palestine corpora.

Keywords: transitional justice, Tamil Eelam, Sri Lanka, archive studies, postcolonial digital humanities, retrieval-augmented generation, AI grounding evaluation, civic infrastructure, falsifiability.