Core concepts
Evidence records verified facts and unresolved conditions. Deterministic policy evaluates them. The Authority Ring opens wherever a material predicate is unresolved, stale, failed or revoked.
Release Case
The immutable dossier binds the request, actor, repository, candidate, artifact, target, operation, evidence, policy, delegation, risk, unknowns and decision. It explains ALLOW, HOLD or DENY before execution.
Production Plan
This is a content-addressed domain object, not a promise that production is supported. The beta profile permits only a fixed non-production canary, one attempt and a bounded resource, time and cost envelope. Production is unavailable.
Permit
An exact signed expiring capability binds project, workflow, candidate, artifact, configuration, target, environment, operation, plan, attempt, budget, fence, delegation and validity. A signature does not excuse changed evidence.
Gateway
The protected gateway authenticates its own workload, verifies the exact permit and target state, and persists durable admission before an external write. Product sessions cannot call a permit-issuing or dispatch endpoint.
Fencing and replay
Monotonic fences identify the current claimant. PostgreSQL serializes target admission and enforces unique permit, operation, attempt and idempotency identities. A duplicate cannot become a second dispatch. Ambiguous mutation results must be reconciled rather than blindly retried.
Independent runtime verification
Deployment metadata describes the provider control plane. It does not prove that the application is healthy. A separate protected observer must bind candidate, artifact, target and observation window. Unavailable evidence is UNKNOWN; detected regression is adverse. The current live staging path lacks sufficient runtime and recovery proof.
Autonomy Passport
Outcome history constrains future operations. UNKNOWN freezes expansion. Verified regression contracts scope according to policy. A past success never grants permanent permission. Live earned expansion is not currently accepted.
GitLab integration
The customer beta can verify public GitLab project identity and protected default-branch state without storing credentials. This proves public connectivity only. Connecting another project does not enroll it into the fixed operational authority workflow. GitLab Duo reviews and diagnoses; it cannot mint authority.
Developer integration
The beta product exposes authenticated workspace and onboarding configuration endpoints only. They mutate product preferences, not operational authority. Customer evidence ingestion, webhooks and API keys are not shipped. Protected repository scripts own commissioning, evidence, issuance and dispatch.
Threat model
Relevant attacks include artifact substitution, target or workflow substitution, forged workload identity, stale evidence, modified delegation, permit tampering, expiry, replay, concurrent dispatch, stale fences, clock rollback and false runtime success. Admission must fail before a consequential write.
Security model
Product identity and workspace data live in a separate database project. Membership is checked server-side; configuration changes require OWNER. Same-origin JSON mutation requests are enforced. Secrets remain server-side. Operational credentials are never supplied to the product deployment or browser. No SOC 2, ISO certification, external audit, SLA or production readiness is claimed.
Private beta limits
Functional scope: accounts, workspace configuration, public GitLab evidence, supervised non-production target preferences and the labeled Trust Lab. Operational binding, independent staging health/recovery proof, live canary acceptance, durable live outcome integration and earned expansion remain incomplete. Billing, production authority, SSO, enterprise invitations and general customer deployment integrations are unavailable.