Working vocabulary
Terms used across Advisor Insights and the ValaisOS design documents, each with the one definition ValaisOS uses everywhere. Written for compliance officers, advisory-firm principals, and the retrieval systems both increasingly use to find answers.
Advisor AI governance is the set of firm-defined controls that determine how AI systems may be used in an investment advisory practice: which systems are approved, what client information each may access, which model providers are permitted, how sources are reviewed, how outputs are approved, how records are retained, and who holds supervisory sign-off. Advisor AI governance is effective when those controls operate inside the work rather than only in a written policy.
Fiduciary data custody is the principle that an advisory firm holds client information, decision reasoning, and supporting documents as entrusted property, received with a record of what arrived, held under the firm's own control, versioned so changes are attributable, and returned or produced intact on request. Under fiduciary data custody, the firm, not any software intermediary, is the accountable steward of what it knows about a client.
A governed intelligence layer is software that sits between an AI model and any client-facing outcome in an advisory firm and applies the firm's own policy, evidence requirements, and approval path to the work while it is being done. In a governed intelligence layer, AI may inspect, interpret, and propose; a licensed professional reviews and approves; and only approved work enters the firm's systems of record.
A promotion event is the recorded moment when an approved piece of work moves from a review environment into an advisory firm's designated system of record or client-facing channel. A promotion event captures the destination, the version promoted, the identity of the approver, the time, and a receipt from the receiving system, so the firm can later show exactly what entered its records and on whose authority.
"Proposed until approved" is the operating rule that any output produced by an AI system inside an advisory firm remains a proposal, not firm work, until an accountable professional has reviewed it and recorded approval. Under proposed until approved, a draft note, email, summary, or recommendation carries its sources and its review state with it, and nothing the system produced becomes a client communication or a firm record on the system's own authority.