Business Semantics

Overview

Business Semantics are the customer-owned meanings behind the facts, terms, states, policies, and decisions your organization uses.

Use this guide before building Decision Mapping. If the customer meaning is unclear, the mapping will either be incomplete or will hide assumptions that should stay in customer-owned systems.

Why Semantics Matter

Different organizations often use different language for similar decisions.

One team might say "prior authorization denied." Another might say "medical necessity not met." A support organization might say "escalate to tier 2," while another says "specialist review required." The phrases may look similar, but their source facts, review rules, owners, and lifecycle effects can be different.

FoxCommand separates customer meaning from runtime execution so the customer system remains the source of truth for business interpretation. FoxCommand can evaluate submitted material and return bounded runtime evidence, but it does not decide what the customer's terms mean.

Example

For a prior authorization workflow, a customer might define:

"Request" as a case created in the customer intake system.
"Medical necessity" as a policy concept owned by a clinical governance team.
"Denial" as a lifecycle state that requires reviewer signoff before release.
"Appeal window" as a date range calculated by the customer system.
"Policy version" as a customer-owned Governance Artifact version.

Those definitions are Business Semantics. They should be resolved before the customer maps the workflow into FoxCommand-compatible inputs.

What To Capture

For each governed decision, capture:

Item	Question to answer
Decision context	What business decision is being evaluated?
Source facts	Which customer facts support the decision?
Vocabulary	Which terms, values, states, or codes have customer-specific meaning?
Evidence	Which records support the source facts or decision context?
Ownership	Which team or system owns the meaning and lifecycle of the facts?
Change control	How does the customer review or approve semantic changes?
Traceability	Which case, release, corpus, review, experiment, or approval identifiers should be preserved?
Handling constraints	Which privacy, retention, or data handling rules apply before runtime submission?

What Customers Own

Customer-owned Business Semantics include:

Workflow names and business process states.
Policy concepts and Governance Artifact meanings.
Review, approval, release, promotion, and rollback meanings.
Case, corpus, experiment, population, or cohort meanings.
Risk, compliance, financial, operational, clinical, or domain-specific interpretations.
The customer system of record for each meaning.

FoxCommand may receive mapped material and customer correlation metadata through current runtime contracts, but that material remains customer-owned context.

Relationship To Customer Configuration

Customer Configuration records durable references that help the integration repeatedly select, submit, trace, and retain material.

Business Semantics explain what the referenced material means.

For example:

A Customer Profile points to customer-owned governance, execution, mapping, credential, and evidence retention references.
Business Semantics explain the customer meaning of those references.
Decision Mapping translates the selected meaning into FoxCommand-compatible inputs.

Relationship To Decision Mapping

Business Semantics describe customer meaning. Decision Mapping translates that meaning into material that can target a FoxCommand Decision Surface.

Do not use Decision Mapping to invent missing meaning. If a source fact, code, state, or value is ambiguous, resolve the meaning in the customer-owned system before mapping it.

Readiness Checklist

Before mapping a decision, confirm:

The decision and source facts have customer-owned definitions.
The customer system of record is identified.
Owners and reviewers are known.
Required evidence and lineage are available.
Data handling constraints are understood.
Traceability identifiers are ready to preserve with runtime evidence where supported.

Runtime Source of Truth

FoxCommand produces bounded runtime evidence over submitted material. Customer systems own Business Semantics and decide how returned evidence affects customer lifecycle records.

Use FoxCommand runtime documentation for exact runtime behavior, API contracts, authentication requirements, and operational limits.

Next Steps

Translate customer-owned meaning through Decision Mapping, then choose the appropriate Decision Surface.