Charter

Governance is written, hashed, and revocable. Rules agents can cite, not vibes.

Charter is the LatticeAGI governance zone core: a versioned, Ed25519-signed policy format (charter.policy/1), a deterministic evaluator (charter.eval/1), a gateway that admits or denies agent tool calls (record.get/put/delete/list/export over the RECORDS binding), an immutable signed audit stream with checkpoints, advisory disputes, fleet freshness observation, and an offline evidence verifier.

Status: Unwritten — gated behind Covenant v1. This repository is the MIT-licensed core implementation of the charter/1 contract. It is not a live product claim, and it does not authorize deployment or a LIVE badge.

What's in the box

Surface	Status
Strict JSON parser (charter/1 scalar grammar) + RFC 8785 canonicalizer	Implemented
YAML 1.2 JSON-subset parser (policy/config source)	Implemented
Policy compiler + deterministic evaluator	Implemented
Bundle signing/verification, pin commands, citations, policy diff	Implemented
Tenant engine: publication, pin CAS, pause, revocations, fleet, audit, checkpoints	Implemented (local SQLite profile)
Gateway admission: durable marker, at-most-one initiation, NOT_SENT/INDETERMINATE honesty	Implemented
charter CLI (all §4 verbs) + serve --local loopback emulator	Implemented
Offline evidence export/verify (charter.stream/1, charter.proof-link/1)	Implemented
Python verifier python -m latticeagi_charter	Implemented
Cloudflare Worker/CharterTenantDO hosted deploy	Stub — NotImplemented (hosted surface)
Production RECORDS adapter (real upstream)	Stub — NotImplemented (requires certified upstream)
Hosted registry operations	Stub — NotImplemented (paid/hosted surface)

Install / run

Requires Node.js ≥ 22.18 (native type stripping, node:sqlite, node:test).

npm install        # dev deps only (typescript, @types/node)
npm test           # full conformance + unit suite
npm run typecheck
./bin/charter --help

Python verifier (no third-party deps):

cd python && python3 -m latticeagi_charter --help

Quick start (local emulator)

# 1. Write a config (see examples/charter.local.yaml) and provision env secrets:
export CHARTER_CLIENT_CREDENTIAL=<base64url-32-byte-bearer>
export CHARTER_AUTH_RECORDS=<base64url J(auth-file)>
export CHARTER_AUDIT_SEED=<base64url-32-byte-ed25519-seed>
export CHARTER_RESPONSE_KEYS=<base64url J(encryption-keys)>

# 2. Boot the loopback emulator
./bin/charter serve --local --config ./charter.yaml --json

# 3. Lint, sign, bundle, publish, pin, call
./bin/charter policy lint policy.yaml --manifest manifest.json --root trust.json
./bin/charter policy sign policy.yaml --manifest manifest.json --key-id cky_... --key-ref env:POLICY_SEED_A --out sig-a.json
./bin/charter policy bundle policy.yaml --manifest manifest.json --signature sig-a.json --signature sig-b.json --root trust.json --out bundle.json
./bin/charter policy publish bundle.json --request-id crq_... --json
./bin/charter pin sign pin-command.json --key-id cky_... --key-ref env:POLICY_SEED_A --out pin-sig-a.json
./bin/charter pin assemble pin-command.json --signature pin-sig-a.json --signature pin-sig-b.json --root trust.json --bundle bundle.json --out signed-pin.json
./bin/charter pin activate signed-pin.json --json
./bin/charter gateway check request.json --json
./bin/charter gateway call request.json --json
./bin/charter audit export --through-seq 5 --out evidence.jsonl
./bin/charter audit verify evidence.jsonl --root trust.json --replay --json

Threat model and honesty contract

Charter admits at most one upstream initiation per request ID, never re-sends a committed call, reports INDETERMINATE rather than guessing, never fabricates a rule for a default deny (default-deny/1 invariant is cited instead), and treats /check as permanently non-authoritative (enforcement:false). Revocation is prospective: it blocks later admissions at that logical gateway and never rewrites history. See docs/ and the conformance suite (test/vectors.test.ts, 66 spec-pinned vectors) for the exact contract.

Layout

src/json        strict parser + J canonicalizer
src/yaml        YAML 1.2 JSON-subset parser
src/crypto      LAGI-CHARTER digests, Ed25519 strict verify
src/schema      closed-schema validators (all wire types)
src/core        compile / evaluate / cite / diff / verifyBundle / verifyEvidence
src/engine      tenant engine: storage, audit, admission, fleet, encryption
src/http        loopback server implementing the 22-route surface
src/adapter     RECORDS binding + fixture adapter (test only)
src/cli         charter CLI
src/hosted      hosted/deploy stubs (NotImplemented)
python/         latticeagi_charter pure-function verifier + module CLI
fixtures/       executable conformance corpus (public RFC 8032 test material)
test/           node:test suite (66 vectors + unit coverage)

License

MIT — see LICENSE.