ΔOS|Documentation

Guarantees

Properties enforced by system design

Last reviewed: 2025-01-25

Guarantees

These are properties of ΔOS that are enforced by system design, not merely goals or aspirations.

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What Guarantee Means

A guarantee is a property that holds under all circumstances within the system's operational parameters. When we say "guarantee," we mean the system is designed such that the property cannot be violated.

Core Guarantees

1. Pre-Execution Evaluation

GuaranteeEnforcement MechanismVerification
Every Intent is evaluated before the associated action executesSDK blocks action pending judgment; no bypass path existsAudit trail contains judgment timestamp before action timestamp

Why it matters: This is the fundamental difference between governance and monitoring. Actions don't proceed and then get reviewed—they're reviewed first.

2. Deterministic Decisions

GuaranteeEnforcement MechanismVerification
The same Intent with the same evidence always produces the same JudgmentLIMs are pure functions with no external state dependenciesReplay any historical Intent and compare outputs

Why it matters: Predictability enables debugging, auditing, and trust. Non-deterministic decisions cannot be verified.

3. Complete Audit Trail

GuaranteeEnforcement MechanismVerification
Every Intent and its Judgment are recorded immutablyAppend-only ledger with hash-chain verificationHash chain validation; gap detection in sequence numbers

Why it matters: Accountability requires proof. The audit trail provides cryptographically verifiable records.

4. Human Authority Preservation

GuaranteeEnforcement MechanismVerification
Humans can always override any automated judgmentOverride API accepts any valid human credentialOverride path tested in CI; no code path can disable

Why it matters: Autonomous systems must remain under human control. This isn't optional.

5. Kill Switch Availability

GuaranteeEnforcement MechanismVerification
The kill switch is always available and cannot be disabledKill switch operates at infrastructure level, outside application codeKill switch has independent monitoring and alerting

Why it matters: If something goes wrong, humans need immediate recourse.

Data Guarantees

6. Intent Immutability

GuaranteeEnforcement MechanismVerification
Created Intents cannot be modified or deletedNo UPDATE or DELETE operations exist in Intent storage layerSchema validation; API contract testing

7. Evidence Capture

GuaranteeEnforcement MechanismVerification
All evidence used in judgment is recorded with the judgmentEvidence is captured before LIM evaluation; included in judgment recordReplay requires no external data sources

8. No Silent Failures

GuaranteeEnforcement MechanismVerification
Every Intent receives either a Judgment or an explicit failureIntent submission blocks until judgment or timeoutNo Intent can have null judgment in production data

Authority Guarantees

9. LIM Authority Boundaries

GuaranteeEnforcement MechanismVerification
LIMs cannot modify policies or execute actionsLIMs have no access to policy modification or action execution APIsStatic analysis of LIM interfaces; runtime capability restrictions

10. Escalation Integrity

GuaranteeEnforcement MechanismVerification
Escalated Intents cannot proceed without human decisionEscalate judgment blocks action until human response recordedNo escalated Intent has action execution without human judgment

Guarantee Boundaries

Guarantees apply within defined boundaries:

What's Guaranteed

  • Properties of the ΔOS system itself
  • Behavior when SDK is used correctly
  • Audit trail integrity
  • Authority boundaries

What's Not Guaranteed

  • Agent behavior outside ΔOS
  • Network availability
  • Third-party system behavior
  • User's own code correctness
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System Boundaries

Guarantees apply to the ΔOS system. If an agent bypasses the SDK and acts directly, that action is not governed. Integration correctness is the user's responsibility.

Verifying Guarantees

Each guarantee can be verified:

Audit Replay

// Replay a historical judgment
const replay = await deltaos.audit.replay(intentId);

if (replay.judgment !== originalJudgment) {
  // Guarantee violation detected
  throw new GuaranteeViolation('Determinism');
}

Hash Chain Validation

// Verify audit chain integrity
const validation = await deltaos.audit.validateChain({
  from: startDate,
  to: endDate
});

console.log(validation);
// { valid: true, intentsChecked: 50000, gapsFound: 0 }

Authority Testing

// Verify LIM cannot access policy API
try {
  await lim.modifyPolicy(); // Should throw
} catch (e) {
  assert(e instanceof AuthorityViolation);
}

Guarantee Violations

If a guarantee is violated, that's a critical incident:

  1. Detection — Continuous verification runs in production
  2. Alerting — Violations trigger immediate high-severity alerts
  3. Response — Kill switch activation if safety-critical
  4. Analysis — Root cause analysis required
  5. Disclosure — Affected customers notified
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Guarantee Violations

Guarantee violations are treated as P0 incidents. We have never shipped a known guarantee violation.

See Also