How it works

Five steps, no surprises.

A proposal goes in. A sealed allow or deny comes out, with the exact rules that produced it and a record you can verify years later.

Canonicalize the proposal

The structured proposal is rewritten into one stable form (sorted keys, normalized values) and hashed with SHA-256, so the same logical request always has the same identity.

input_hash = sha256(canonical_json(proposal))

Load the pinned policy

Policies are versioned and immutable once activated. The active policy is pinned by hash; if the file no longer matches its pin, every decision is denied until it is reviewed and re-pinned.

rules edited but not re-approved deny every request, until reviewed

Evaluate, deterministically

Rules are applied in a fixed order. Deny takes precedence; anything not explicitly allowed is denied. The evaluator performs no network, clock, filesystem or environment access.

decision: allow | deny reasons: ["which rule decided, and why"]

Seal and chain

The proposal hash, policy hash, decision and reasons are written to an append-only ledger. Each entry carries the hash of the one before it. An allow that cannot be recorded does not happen.

entry_hash = sha256(seq, decision, decision_hash, prior_entry_hash)

Anchor and replay

The ledger head is signed and committed to version control. Later, any decision can be replayed against its original policy version; signatures and the chain prove nothing was removed or rewritten.

verify record OK chain intact, signatures valid

Decision model

Binary outcomes, explicit reasons.

The sealed outcome is always allow or deny. Escalation, approval and quarantine are dispositions on a deny, never a third answer.

Situation	Outcome	Reason given
Nothing in the policy allows the action	deny	Not permitted by policy
An explicit deny rule matches	deny	Matched a deny rule
An overlay tries to widen the base policy	deny	Overlays may only restrict
Policy file differs from its pin	deny	Rules changed since approval
An allow rule matches and nothing denies	allow	Matched an allow rule

Ready when you are

See where it is enforced.

The same evaluator guards commits, CI, AI assistants and the file system.

Explore enforcement