Preserved Derivation. The durable link from conclusion back to the evidence, policy, scoring, approval, and context that produced it.
A preserved derivation turns a conclusion from a free assertion into something replayable and defensible. It is narrower than the full decision registry, which owns the decision lifecycle, and broader than triggering evidence, which names the specific facts that caused one decision to fire. Evidence bundles, audit records, and replayable decision records preserve derivations so reviewers can reconstruct not just what happened, but why. When the derivation depends on external sources, it needs source snapshots, not only citations.