NIKOLAI
Nomenclature & Index for Knowledge Ontologies, Lexicons & AI Interoperability
NIKOLAI is the common language for frontier-AI safety reporting: one definition and one identifier for every element a safety framework, risk report, or evaluation can contain, crosswalked to how major labs, evaluators and governments each use these concepts — so commitments can be compared, not just read.
What NIKOLAI is
An open, versioned, machine-readable Dictionary of Elements for frontier-AI safety documentation, published by CASRAI under CC-BY 4.0. Each element has a working definition, a stable identifier, and — where the research corpus supports it — a crosswalk showing how named organisations' own published documents use the concept.
What NIKOLAI is not
NIKOLAI is not an evaluator, an auditor, a regulator, or a lab consortium. It runs no evaluations, holds no model weights, and receives no pre-release access. It does not certify that any lab is safe, and it does not issue “compliant” or “frontier-class” designations.
Every crosswalk here is a shadow mapping
No lab, evaluator or regulator has endorsed NIKOLAI, reviewed a mapping, or been consulted on this dictionary. Where an element page shows how “Anthropic” or “the EU AI Act” uses a term, that reading is CASRAI's own — drawn from that organisation's published documents, never from a conversation with them. This is labelled on every single crosswalk row, not only here. It stops being a shadow mapping for a given organisation only when that organisation files its own Mapping Declaration, reviewed by a CASRAI editor before it goes live.
Where the vocabulary comes from
The published elements are drawn from a research pass reading primary-source safety frameworks and government instruments directly — Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy and Risk Report, OpenAI's Preparedness Framework, Google DeepMind's Frontier Safety Framework, xAI's Frontier AI Framework, Meta's Advanced AI Scaling Framework, California SB 53, the EU GPAI Code of Practice, and evaluator and standards-body material from METR and the Frontier Model Forum. Every citation on an element page resolves to a real published document.
This roster is not every lab building frontier-capability models — it is the labs that have published a comparable, English-language dangerous-capability safety framework NIKOLAI could actually crosswalk against. A lab's absence here reflects a corpus-coverage gap, not a claim about that lab's safety posture.
Look up a specific concept
Common entry points into the dictionary:
- Safety case — the structured argument that a model's risk is acceptably low
- Capability threshold — the point at which a model requires new safeguards
- AI incident reporting — deadlines, recipients, and discovery method
- AI model cards & scope — developer, model identifier, deployment surface
- Evaluator independence — conflict-of-interest terms for third-party review
- Redaction — what a developer may withhold from a published safety report
The tracks
64 elements published across all ten tracks.
- N1 · Actors, models and scope
Developer, model identifier, deployment surface, coverage date, safety framework version, coverage scope threshold, severity threshold, risk domain.
- N2 · Threat models and risk framing
Threat model, risk pathway, threat-actor profile.
- N3 · Thresholds and checkpoints
Capability threshold, threshold status, alert threshold, checkpoint rule, halt condition, reassessment trigger.
- N4 · Claims and argument
Claim, safety case, likelihood term, risk level, confidence adjustment, residual risk and risk acceptance determination, marginal versus absolute risk basis, limitation.
- N5 · Evidence and evaluations
Evaluation, evaluation run, elicitation method, saturation status, evaluation-validity threat.
- N6 · Mitigations and security
Monitor, safeguard, robustness level, coverage level, exemption, security level, security control, mitigation change, internal deployment and internal-use risk.
- N7 · Incidents
Incident, incident type, discovery method, incident reporting deadline and recipient.
- N8 · Transparency and review
Redaction, redaction reason, external review, evaluator access attestation, publication rights clause, AI-model review, evaluator independence and conflict of interest.
- N9 · Commitments and governance
Commitment, framework update protocol, roadmap item, industry-wide recommendation, pre-release sharing window, mapping declaration, accountable decision-maker and sign-off, noncompliance and whistleblower reporting.
- N10 · Assurance roles
Declaring representative, CASRAI declaration reviewer, corroborating evaluator, declaration disputant, declaration accuracy steward, declaration role.
FAQ
Frequently asked
Common questions about what NIKOLAI is, what it isn't, and where the vocabulary comes from.
- What is NIKOLAI?
NIKOLAI is an open, versioned, machine-readable Dictionary of Elements for frontier-AI safety documentation, published by CASRAI under CC-BY 4.0. Each element has a working definition, a stable identifier, and — where the research corpus supports it — a crosswalk showing how named organisations' own published documents use the concept.
- Has any AI lab endorsed NIKOLAI?
No. No lab, evaluator or regulator has endorsed NIKOLAI, reviewed a mapping, or been consulted on this dictionary. Where an element page shows how an organisation's framework uses a term, that reading is CASRAI's own, drawn from that organisation's published documents, never from a conversation with them. Every crosswalk row is labelled a shadow mapping for exactly this reason — it stops being one for a given organisation only when that organisation files its own Mapping Declaration.
- Does NIKOLAI certify or audit AI labs?
No. NIKOLAI is not an evaluator, an auditor, a regulator, or a lab consortium. It runs no evaluations, holds no model weights, and receives no pre-release access. It does not certify that any lab is safe, and it does not issue “compliant” or “frontier-class” designations.
- Where does NIKOLAI’s vocabulary come from?
The published elements are drawn from a research pass reading primary-source safety frameworks and government instruments directly: Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy and Risk Report, OpenAI's Preparedness Framework, Google DeepMind's Frontier Safety Framework, xAI's Frontier AI Framework, Meta's Advanced AI Scaling Framework, California SB 53, the EU GPAI Code of Practice, and evaluator and standards-body material from METR and the Frontier Model Forum. Every citation on an element page resolves to a real published document.
- How many elements does NIKOLAI define?
NIKOLAI nikolai-v0.2 currently defines 64 elements across all ten tracks, crosswalked against real published safety-framework documents from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, xAI, Meta and others, plus the accountability roles around NIKOLAI's own Mapping Declaration process — see the versioning policy.
