Signal

Perception new in 2.0 since 2.0 aow:Signal

A raw, time-stamped trace emitted by a system, a person, or the environment: an event, a log line, a user-interface interaction, a document arriving, a state change, a metric sample.

Records what happened before any interpretation. Observations, Context, and audit trails are derived from Signals.

Attributes

Attribute	Type	Required	Description
`signal_type`	one of `event`, `log`, `metric`, `interaction`, `document`, `state-change`	yes	The kind of trace.
`source`	string	yes	The system, sensor, application, or channel that emitted the Signal.
`observed_at`	datetime	yes	When the Signal occurred.
`payload_ref`	uri		Where the raw payload is stored, if it is kept.
`sensitivity_level`	one of `public`, `internal`, `confidential`, `restricted`		Handling classification of the payload.

Every entity also has an id and a type, and may carry label, description, and the provenance facet: version, created_at, created_by, revision_of.

Relationships

Relationship	Points to	How many	Required	Meaning
`generated_by`	Action	one		The Action that produced this Result, Signal, or Observation.

Pointed to by

From	Relationship	Read backward as
Observation	`derived_from`	source of

Notes

Version 1.0 listed Telemetry Events, Signals, Session State, and Environmental Observations as Perception-layer elements without defining them. In 2.0 a Telemetry Event is a Signal whose signal_type is "event" or "metric"; Session State is Context with context_type "session".

A Signal can be linked to the Action that generated it (generated_by). Agent activity can then be analyzed with the same tools used for human and system activity.

Alignments

Standard or protocol	Term	Correspondence
OpenTelemetry	`span / log record / metric data point`	relatedMatch
IEEE 1849 XES	`event`	closeMatch
W3C PROV-O	`prov:Entity`	subClassOf

Example

Source: examples/claims-processing.jsonld. The example passes all validation checks.

{
  "id": "sig-claim-form-84933",
  "type": "Signal",
  "signal_type": "document",
  "source": "claims-intake-portal",
  "observed_at": "2026-09-14T09:12:04Z",
  "payload_ref": "https://dms.example.org/claims/84933/claim-form.pdf",
  "sensitivity_level": "confidential"
}

Term reference · JSON Schema · SHACL shape aowsh:SignalShape