The TLTE Method.
Citation-Tier, Mirror-Publish, and Graduation-Gate protocols for civic archives on contested histories. A reproducible benchmark for AI grounding on the same corpus.
We document a civic-archive method, in production use at docs.tlte.cloud, that combines three named protocols: a four-tier source discipline that treats the archive itself as a route rather than a source; a mirror-publish protocol that strips the archive of any "trusted reporter" role with accountability bodies; and a graduation-gate logic that forbids opening operational surfaces (intake, naming, hosted testimony) until six binary preconditions close in public. We accompany the method with a reproducible benchmark for grounded-AI evaluation on contested historical narratives (46+ cases, must-refuse / must-answer / must-route / must-disambiguate), an append-only continuity log with anti-fraud verification, and a permanent-identifier citation registry of 100+ Tier-A anchors. We argue the method generalises beyond Tamil-Eelam transitional-justice work to any contested-corpus civic archive that must remain falsifiable under hostile reading.
Suggested citation
Transformative League of Tamil Eelam. (Aarambam). The TLTE Method: Citation-Tier, Mirror-Publish, and Graduation-Gate Protocols for Civic Archives on Contested Histories (Version 1.0.0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20430548
BibTeX
@techreport{tlte_method_2026,
author = {{Transformative League of Tamil Eelam}},
title = {The {TLTE} Method: Citation-Tier, Mirror-Publish, and
Graduation-Gate Protocols for Civic Archives on Contested Histories},
year = {Aarambam},
version = {1.0.0},
type = {Preprint},
institution = {Zenodo},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.20430548},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20430548},
note = {tlte-cite:preprint-v1}
}Multi-Mirror Protocol
The preprint is deposited across three independent, jurisdictionally distinct permanent archives. If any one platform suffers an outage, removal pressure, or governance change, the DOI on the other two still resolves. Permanence is a structural claim, not a vendor promise.
Each mirror is updated only when the external record is live — never aspirationally. When OSF and HAL go live, the placeholders here are swapped for the resolved identifiers and the change is logged in the Continuity Changelog.
DOI-pinning protocol
v1.0.0 is the first citable release of the preprint. The PDF is published here and mirrored under the Multi-Mirror Protocol above. The DOI is added to /cite/preprint-v1 when minted; the version string here moves only when the printed text changes, not when the PDF is regenerated. Every version remains downloadable; the changelog at /research/preprint/versions records what changed and why.
Zenodo DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20430548 · Licence CC-BY-4.0 · Version 1.0.0.
OSF (SocArXiv): submitted osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/8jz6x_v1 — pending moderation. HAL: pending deposit. SSRN: under review as tertiary mirror.
Integrity
The PDF is content-addressed: a SHA-256 of the binary appears in the published Continuity Changelog the moment a new version ships, and on /continuity/integrity alongside the hash chain. Any divergence between the file you downloaded and the published hash means the file was modified after release — and is by definition not the preprint.
Where the TLTE Method sits in transitional justice, archive studies, postcolonial DH, and RAG-eval literature.
The three protocols applied to one adjacent contested corpus as a control.
What attacks the architecture is designed to survive, and the specific structural defence against each.
Lattice, state-machine and Boolean-predicate definitions of the three protocols.