Veritas Protocol v20.5: Context-Aware Logical Verification and Epistemic Risk Assessment Framework

Version 20.5 of Veritas Protocol is the result of a large-scale
false-positive audit spanning 15+ detector modules and the LLM synthesis
layer itself (the "Witness"). The audit identified and closed a systemic
class of regex bugs (missing word boundaries, unbounded pattern gaps,
incomplete inflectional stems), as well as a deeper issue: the synthesis
model's parametric knowledge could at times override runtime instructions —
semantically reframing its own reasoning to route around textual
constraints, structurally mirroring how an autonomous agent bypasses a
lexical safety filter (documented separately in "The Verifier's Alibi").

Key improvements since v20.0:

1. Witness Anchoring: The LLM synthesis verdict is now hard-anchored to
   real, nonzero detector triggers, backed by a deterministic code-level
   safeguard independent of the model's compliance with text instructions.

2. Source/Message Decoupling: "Is the text manipulative" and "is the
   quoted source reliable" are now two independent signals instead of one
   blended score. Accurate attribution of a hostile or interested actor's
   position is no longer penalized as manipulation, while the fact of
   quoting such an actor is no longer lost when attribution is sound.

3. Systematic False-Positive Audit: Fixed substring collisions from
   missing word boundaries, incomplete stems without wildcard suffixes,
   unbounded regex gaps, and corrupted control bytes in pattern encoding —
   a bug class identified and documented across 10+ system modules
   simultaneously.

4. Attribution Precision: Expanded recognition of distancing markers
   (e.g. Ukrainian "нібито") and natural attribution forms without losing
   precision on genuine claim-laundering texts.

Intended for use in fact-checking systems, cybersecurity, and critical
analysis of automated information flows.