Written and maintained by CASRAI Editorial Board
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If a lab, regulator, evaluator, or standards body has found itself mapped somewhere inside CASRAI’s NIKOLAI dictionary and wants to know how to confirm that mapping is accurate, dispute one that isn’t, or get an entry NIKOLAI missed added, the mechanism for all three is the same: a Mapping Declaration, filed at casrai.org/nikolai/declare. This page walks through what that process actually involves, what changes once a declaration goes live, and — just as importantly — what it does not change.
What a “shadow mapping” is
Every crosswalk row inside NIKOLAI starts life as what CASRAI calls a shadow mapping: CASRAI’s own, independent reading of how a term is used in an organization’s published materials, built without that organization being consulted or asked to confirm anything. NIKOLAI states this plainly on its own pages: “No lab, evaluator or regulator has endorsed NIKOLAI, reviewed a mapping, or been consulted on this dictionary.” A shadow mapping is CASRAI’s guess, made from public documents — never a conversation with the organization, and never that organization’s sign-off.
This is also why every row defaults to shadow status. NIKOLAI is CASRAI’s own reference project, not a survey CASRAI sent out and collected responses to. Until an organization actively does something to change that status, the mapping sitting next to its name reflects CASRAI’s interpretation alone — which is exactly why NIKOLAI describes itself as “not an evaluator, an auditor, a regulator, or a lab consortium.” It’s a dictionary CASRAI maintains, and by default, an unconfirmed one.
What changes when an organization files a Mapping Declaration
A Mapping Declaration is the mechanism an organization uses to speak for itself inside NIKOLAI. Filing one moves a specific crosswalk row out of shadow status. The process has two steps that matter:
- Organization identity verification. Declarations are tied to an organization, not an individual — NIKOLAI verifies this through sign-up with an email address at the organization’s own domain, so a declaration can’t be filed anonymously or on a company’s behalf by someone unaffiliated with it.
- An admin-reviewed publish gate. Filing a declaration does not put it live immediately. Every declaration — whether it comes from a lab, a regulator, or an evaluator — is reviewed by a CASRAI editor before it goes live. This is not a self-publish form; nothing an organization submits appears on NIKOLAI until CASRAI has checked it.
Once a declaration clears that review, the row for that organization stops being a shadow mapping and is labeled as that organization’s own declared position — visible on the relevant element and track pages inside NIKOLAI (for example, the incident-reporting elements under Track N7: Incidents, which cover things like reportable-incident deadlines and discovery methods).
What a declaration means — and what it doesn’t
This is the part worth being precise about, because it’s easy to over-read. A Mapping Declaration is that specific organization’s own confirmation of how it uses a term in its own materials. It is not CASRAI vouching for the term, and it is not any third party — another lab, a regulator, an accreditor — endorsing anything. A declaration from one organization says nothing about how any other organization uses the same term.
It also doesn’t change what NIKOLAI is. Even after dozens of organizations have filed declarations across every track, NIKOLAI remains CASRAI’s own project — an independent reference dictionary, not a standard any lab or regulator has adopted, and not a body any organization now defers to by having declared against it. Filing a declaration confirms one organization’s own usage of one term. It does not make NIKOLAI “official,” it does not make it “the standard,” and it does not mean that organization — or anyone else — endorses NIKOLAI more broadly. Those two things are easy to conflate and NIKOLAI is built specifically to keep them separate: shadow-mapping-by-default, declaration-by-choice, and CASRAI’s own editorial project throughout.
Why a compliance team, lab, or regulator would actually do this
Filing a declaration is optional, so the reasons an organization does it tend to come down to a few concrete things:
- Accuracy. A shadow mapping is CASRAI’s best reading of public documents. Public documents can be ambiguous, outdated, or simply misread. A declaration is the direct way to correct that without waiting for CASRAI to happen to notice and re-check it.
- Reduced misrepresentation risk. If a term in an organization’s own safety framework is being paraphrased incorrectly somewhere a regulator, journalist, or counterpart lab might read it, an uncorrected shadow mapping is a standing risk. A declaration closes that gap for the specific rows that matter.
- A citable public record. Once reviewed and live, a declaration is a dated, public statement of how that organization itself defines and uses a given term — something a compliance team can point to later, rather than reconstructing the position from internal documents each time it’s asked.
None of this requires agreeing with NIKOLAI’s broader scope or every other element in it. A declaration is scoped to specific rows an organization chooses to speak to — it isn’t an all-or-nothing adoption of the dictionary.
How to actually file one
The flow at casrai.org/nikolai/declare starts with drafting: sign up with an organization-domain email and a declaration can be drafted right away, confirming a shadow mapping that’s accurate, disputing one that isn’t, or adding a mapping NIKOLAI missed entirely. From there it sits with a CASRAI editor for review before publication — the gate described above — and once cleared, it’s live and attributed to that organization specifically. Anyone who’s already started this process can pick it back up from their dashboard rather than beginning again.
Related: NIKOLAI and how CASRAI tracks this terminology
Mapping Declarations exist because CASRAI’s NIKOLAI dictionary — nikolai-v0.2, 64 elements across ten tracks, N1 through N10, covering things like capability thresholds, evaluations, safeguards, incident reporting, and accountability roles — is explicitly built as an unendorsed, independent reference rather than a claim of authority over how any lab or regulator uses its own terms. Every row starts as CASRAI’s own shadow-mapped reading; a declaration is the one mechanism that lets an organization put its own confirmed position on the record instead. That’s the whole relationship between this page’s topic and the rest of the project: CASRAI’s own NIKOLAI dictionary does the mapping, and Mapping Declarations are how an organization corrects or confirms CASRAI’s guess about its own terminology — nothing here turns CASRAI’s own NIKOLAI project into something any organization has endorsed.
For context on why incident-related terminology in particular draws regulatory attention right now, see CASRAI’s guide to accountable decision-makers under California SB 53.
Frequently asked questions
Is NIKOLAI an official or endorsed AI safety standard?
No. NIKOLAI is CASRAI’s own independent reference dictionary. No lab, evaluator, or regulator has endorsed it, reviewed a mapping, or been consulted in building it — that stays true whether or not any given crosswalk row carries a declaration.
Does filing a Mapping Declaration mean our organization endorses NIKOLAI?
No. A declaration confirms your organization’s own usage of a specific term in your own materials. It doesn’t extend to endorsing NIKOLAI, CASRAI, or any other element in the dictionary.
Who can file a Mapping Declaration?
Anyone signing up with an email address at their organization’s own domain — labs, regulators, and evaluators are all named explicitly as eligible filers on the declare page.
Does a declaration get published immediately?
No. Every declaration is reviewed by a CASRAI editor before it goes live; there’s no self-publish path.
What happens to a crosswalk row before anyone declares against it?
It stays a shadow mapping — CASRAI’s own independent reading, built from public documents and not confirmed by the organization it describes.
If your organization’s terminology shows up somewhere in NIKOLAI and the mapping needs confirming, correcting, or adding to, the place to do that is casrai.org/nikolai/declare.
