Instrument · Module 4

An append-only log, with its refusals showing

There is a delete button. It refuses, and it says why. Reading the refusal is the exercise.

Records may be added. Never modified, never deleted.

The same discipline a general ledger has used for six hundred years. A correction is a new record that references the original; both are permanent. The operational consequence — and Module 4 is blunt about it — is that a data entry error becomes visible, corrected, and permanent, rather than erased.

Why the refusals matter more than the appends

Every custody system can add a record. The question a procurement evaluation should ask is what happens when someone tries to remove one — and whether the attempt is itself recorded. That is question 3 of the Module 7 bank, and it is the one most often answered with a policy rather than an architecture. A policy that an administrator can override is the same problem with a signature on it.