dev.idiolect.deliberationStatement

A participant utterance submitted to a deliberation. Statements are the units votes attach to; the deliberation itself is not voted on directly. Classification is an open-enum slug resolved against a community vocabulary, so communities that draw the line between claim and proposal differently can extend or remap without forking the lexicon.

Source: lexicons/dev/idiolect/deliberationStatement.json · Rust: idiolect_records::DeliberationStatement · TS: @idiolect-dev/schema/deliberationStatement · Fixture: idiolect_records::examples::deliberation_statement

Shape

Field	Type	Required	Notes
`deliberation`	`strongRecordRef`	yes	AT-URI + CID for the deliberation this statement participates in.
`text`	string (≤400 graphemes)	yes	Statement text.
`classification`	open enum	no	`claim` / `proposal` / `dissent` / `clarification` / `question`.
`classificationVocab`	`vocabRef`	no	Vocab the classification slug resolves against.
`anonymous`	boolean (default `false`)	no	Whether the statement was submitted anonymously.
`createdAt`	datetime	yes	Publication timestamp.

Field details

Why `strongRecordRef` for the deliberation pointer

deliberation carries both the AT-URI and the CID. Pinning by CID prevents a later deliberation revision from silently rescoping the statement. A consumer that reads the statement and follows the pointer gets the exact deliberation revision the participant was responding to.

This matters when deliberations are edited mid-process (e.g. the publisher clarifies the topic). Statements published before the edit pin the pre-edit revision; statements published after pin the post-edit revision. Folds and consumers can distinguish.

`text`

The statement itself. The 400-grapheme cap is conventional, not arbitrary: brevity is what makes statements voteable. Long-form context belongs on the deliberation record's description or in a community-published companion document linked from the description.

`classification`

Slug	What it captures
`claim`	An assertion of fact or opinion.
`proposal`	A specific proposed action.
`dissent`	An objection to a prior statement or to the deliberation framing.
`clarification`	A request for or provision of clarification.
`question`	An open question requiring an answer.

Classifications are argumentative roles, not topics. A community that draws different distinctions (amendment, process-objection, tangent, ...) extends via classificationVocab. The classification is optional; a deliberation that wants to stay agnostic on argumentative roles omits it.

`anonymous`

When true, the statement was submitted anonymously. The typical implementation: the statement is authored on a designated service DID rather than the participant's personal repo, so the repo signature does not reveal identity. Consumers that need provenance match on the repo DID (the service DID), not on this record's content.

The flag is a declaration: the substrate does not enforce anonymity beyond what the publishing rail provides. A community that wants strong anonymity uses an anonymizing service DID with its own access controls.

Example

{
  "$type": "dev.idiolect.deliberationStatement",
  "deliberation": {
    "uri": "at://did:plc:community/dev.idiolect.deliberation/3l5",
    "cid": "bafy..."
  },
  "text": "Adopting the v2 lens would lose dialect markers on legacy posts.",
  "classification": "dissent",
  "anonymous": false,
  "createdAt": "2026-04-19T00:00:00.000Z"
}