1. A lawful, exact corpus
The launch translation is the public-domain, 66-book World English Bible (WEBP). The authoritative VPL archive is downloaded from eBible.org, hashed, parsed without textual normalization, and validated for book, chapter, verse, duplicate, and empty-text integrity.
2. Evidence before interpretation
The system normalizes the question, runs safety and intent checks, retrieves lexical and semantic candidates, expands context, and gives Gospel passages preference when the user asks specifically about Jesus’ teaching.
3. Opaque citation IDs
The model receives a limited evidence package and may return only stored citation IDs. The server rejects unknown IDs, resolves the reference, and hydrates the exact quotation from the corpus. A model-authored quotation is never trusted for display.
4. The letter and the Scripture stay distinguishable
The advice is the letter; the passages sit beneath it as receipts you can open, read in full, and check in context. Commentary is never presented as quoted Scripture, and disputed topics are named as disputed rather than flattened into a consensus that does not exist.
5. Important limits
Speaker metadata and passage headings are editorial aids, not unquestionable facts. Retrieval can miss relevant passages; models can produce poor synthesis; and no automated method settles theology. Reports and reviewed evaluation samples are part of the release gate.