# approval-engine

**The approval as a durable, authenticated, consumable object — issued before an
action, verified at the moment of use, and provably not replayable.**

An Engine in the NetKingdom security layer model. It answers one question,
totally and decidably:

> Is this approval valid right now — for this exact action, target, actor, and
> purpose — and has it already been used?

It does **not** decide whether the action is permitted. That is `access-engine`,
which stays NetKingdom's only policy decision point. An approval is one input to
that decision.

Deliberately small, boring, and strict: atomic supersession and single
consumption are what make Canon test `T-06 — Approval Replay` passable.
Flexibility here would be a defect. Graded, evidence-based progression belongs to
`maturity-engine`; the two engines are deliberate opposites.

See [INTENT.md](INTENT.md). Origin: `flex-auth` `FLEX-DEC-2026-001`, raised while
assenting to the security layer model.