git.stella-ops.org/docs/modules/concelier/linkset-correlation-21-002.md

CONCELIER-LNM-21-002 · Linkset correlation rules (v1)

Purpose: unblock CONCELIER-LNM-21-002 by freezing correlation/precedence rules and providing fixtures so builders and downstream consumers can proceed.

Scope

• Applies to linksets produced from advisory_observations (LNM v1).
• Correlation is aggregation-only: no value synthesis or merge; emit conflicts instead of collapsing fields.
• Output persists in advisory_linksets and drives advisory.linkset.updated@1 events.

Deterministic confidence calculation (0–1)

confidence = clamp(
  0.40 * alias_score +
  0.25 * purl_overlap_score +
  0.15 * cpe_overlap_score +
  0.10 * severity_agreement +
  0.05 * reference_overlap +
  0.05 * freshness_score
)

• alias_score: 1 if any alias exact-match across observations; 0.5 if vendor ID prefixes match; else 0.
• purl_overlap_score: 1 if same pkg+version range intersects; 0.6 if same pkg family but disjoint ranges; 0 otherwise. Use semver/rpm/deb comparers as in LNM v1.
• cpe_overlap_score: 1 if any CPE exact-match; 0.5 if same vendor/product, any version; else 0.
• severity_agreement: 1 if CVSS base score delta ≤ 0.1; 0.5 if ≤ 1.0; else 0. Use max of available CVSS per observation.
• reference_overlap: fraction of shared reference URLs (case-normalized) between the pair with the highest overlap across the set.
• freshness_score: 1 when fetchedAt spread ≤ 48h; linearly decays to 0 at 14 days.
• Sort observations before scoring by (source.vendor, advisoryId, fetchedAt); reuse that order for hashing and for output arrays.

Conflict emission (add-only)

Emit a conflict entry per divergent field group:

• severity-mismatch: CVSS base score delta > 1.0 or vector differs.
• affected-range-divergence: version ranges do not intersect.
• reference-clash: no shared references and source vendors differ.
• alias-inconsistency: aliases disjoint across observations.
• metadata-gap: required fields missing on any observation. Each conflict includes field, reason, and values (array of source: value strings) and is stable-sorted by field then reason.

Linkset output shape additions

• key.confidence: populated from formula above.
• conflicts[]: as defined; may be empty but never null. Each conflict also carries sourceIds[] (vendors/sources that produced the values) for provenance.
• normalized retains add-only fields from link-not-merge-schema.md; do not drop raw ranges even when disjoint.
• provenance.hashes: sorted list of observationHash values; used by replay bundles.

Fixtures

• docs/samples/lnm/linkset-lnm-21-002-sample.json: two-source agreement (high confidence, no conflicts).
• docs/samples/lnm/linkset-lnm-21-002-conflict.json: three-source disagreement showing conflict records and confidence < 0.7. All fixtures use ASCII ordering and ISO-8601 UTC timestamps and may be used as golden outputs in tests.

Implementation checklist

• Builder must refuse to overwrite existing linkset when incoming hash list unchanged.
• Correlation job idempotency key: hash(tenantId|aliasSet|purlSet|fetchedAtBucket).
• Telemetry: counter concelier.linkset.builder.conflict_total{field,reason} and histogram concelier.linkset.builder.confidence (0–1 buckets).
• Event emission: include confidence and conflicts summary in advisory.linkset.updated@1; keep arrays sorted as above.

Change control

• Add-only. Adjusting weights or conflict codes requires new version advisory.linkset.updated@2 and a sprint note.