doxa

Warning Doxa is currently in an early, unstable stage. APIs, query semantics, file formats, and behavior may change without notice. It is not yet recommended for production use.

An epistemic knowledge representation language — Datalog/Prolog-grounded, temporally-aware, conflict-sensitive, and auditable.

The Problem

Existing knowledge systems collapse important epistemic distinctions into a single dimension:

• Classical Datalog / SQL — facts are ground truth. Conflict is a bug, ignorance is absence, decay requires manual deletion.
• Probabilistic systems — a scalar p ∈ [0,1] cannot distinguish no evidence from equal evidence both ways; conflict, ignorance, and uncertainty all look the same.
• Graph / triple stores — no first-class uncertainty model at all.

None of these can represent: "Source A strongly believes X, Source B strongly disbelieves X, valid between D1–D2, and the conflict is unresolved."

What Doxa Does

Every fact in Doxa is a BeliefRecord — a ground atom paired with:

• b / d — independent degrees of evidence for and against (b + d ≤ 1)
• src — who asserts this belief
• vf / vt — real-world validity period
• et — epistemic time (when the belief entered the KB)

This yields four qualitatively distinct epistemic states grounded in Belnap's four-valued logic:

No single confidence scalar can represent all four — the distinction between None and Both is categorical, not a matter of degree.

bird(owl) @{b:0.98, src:"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owl", et:"2026-03-24"}.
weight_g(owl, 1500) @{b:0.98, src:"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owl", et:"2026-03-24"}.
wingspan_cm(owl, 110) @{b:0.97, src:"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owl", et:"2026-03-24"}.

bird(penguin) @{b:1.0, src:"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin", et:"2026-03-24"}.
weight_g(penguin, 30000) @{b:0.95, src:"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin", et:"2026-03-24"}.
wingspan_cm(penguin, 60) @{b:0.90, src:"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin", et:"2026-03-24"}.

can_fly(X) :-
    bird(X),
    weight_g(X, W),
    wingspan_cm(X, S),
    div(W, S, R),
    lt(R, 20) @{
        b:0.98, 
        src:"simplified heuristic inspired by wing loading (weight / wing area)", 
        et:"2026-03-24"
    }.

doxa> ?- can_fly(owl).
  1: b=0.913, d=0, status=true
doxa> ?- can_fly(penguin). 
  1: b=0, d=0, status=neither

Key Properties

• Conflict without corruption — disagreeing sources produce Both, not an average; conflict is queryable, and the query policy (credulous/skeptical) resolves it at query time
• Ignorance without inference — unasserted facts return None, not a prior or default false
• Time as a language primitive — temporal validity and epistemic time are enforced uniformly via asof query semantics, not modeling conventions
• Auditability built in — derivation traces (explain) name every supporting BeliefRecord, its source, validity window, and belief degree
• Guaranteed termination — Datalog semantics ensure every query over a finite KB terminates

Foundations

Doxa's parametric combination algebra follows Lakshmanan & Shiri (2001). Its (b, d) semantics are grounded in Belnap (1977) and instantiated with Jøsang's subjective logic (2016). Doxa's contribution is the co-design of these elements into a single language with first-class provenance, temporal annotation, and audit traces — promoted from modeling conventions to language primitives enforced by the parser.

Language Specification

For the full formal syntax, semantics, builtins, query options, and edge cases see the Language Specification.

Repository Layout

Install

pip install doxa-lang

Optional PostgreSQL dependencies:

pip install "doxa-lang[postgres]"

For local development from source:

pip install -e ".[dev,postgres]"
pytest

Native Build Prerequisites

• Python >=3.11
• Rust toolchain 1.89 (pinned in rust-toolchain.toml and CI)
• A working C/C++ compiler toolchain (build-essential on Linux, Xcode CLT on macOS, MSVC Build Tools on Windows)

Prebuilt wheels are published for Linux/macOS/Windows on CPython 3.11-3.13. The prerequisites above are required when building from source.

Backend Matrix

Environment Variables

• DOXA_POSTGRES_URL (default: postgresql://localhost/doxa): PostgreSQL connection URL used by --memory postgres.
• DOXA_POSTGRES_NATIVE_SQL (1 to enable): route eligible PostgreSQL queries through the native SQL fast path.

Quick Start

doxa --help
doxa
doxa --memory postgres --engine postgres

The CLI supports memory, native, and postgres backends via --memory and --engine.

License

MIT