informed-decision/SCOPE.md

SCOPE

Implemented-and-first-cut boundary for agents and contributors. Aspirational direction belongs in INTENT.md; the current stage belongs in GOAL.md; current work and gates belong in workplans/.

Status — 2026-09-09

Specification and declaration are complete; no service is deployed.

What exists and is tested: the layer and stance declarations (layer.yaml, pep-stance.yaml, informed_decision/stance.py), the governed canonicalizer and schema, and the four specs under docs/specs/. 46 tests pass.

What does not exist: any HTTP surface, any storage, any UI, any deployment. The walking skeleton is INFD-WP-0001-T08 and is gated on an external decision (§"Open" below).

One-liner

informed-decision is the presentation and binding surface for decisions: it renders a Decision Memo to the human who holds the mandate, records what was shown, and binds their identity to the act — and owns the browser-facing approver UI that approval-engine deliberately does not contain.

Layer

PEP-shaped, ruled by GH-DEC-2026-012. Not an Engine. Companion §5 owed, statute §6.4 in full. Declared in layer.yaml in this repository's own voice.

It emits one PIP-like fact — what was presented — as a claim, under three limits that are the substance of the permission rather than caveats on it:

1. the claim carries presentation and nothing else, and must never carry, restate, summarise or imply a decision or verdict;
2. the claim must never be an input to the decision it presents for;
3. the evidence copy reaches audit-core independently of this repository.

Limit 2 is load-bearing: the argument that a renderer attesting its own rendering is not self-dealing was accepted because that limit holds.

Core Idea

A decision surface is not a workflow engine and not a decision point. This repository owns the Decision Memo object, the presentation record, the canonicalization producing view_hash / awareness_hash, the disposition vocabulary, and the evidence bundle export. It does not evaluate whether an act is permitted, does not hold approval current-state, and does not archive the trail.

In Scope — first cut (Stage 1)

Built and tested:

• Canonicalization of the binding and awareness documents, with the three published vectors reproducing byte for byte and all four isolation properties pinned (tests/test_canonicalize.py).
• The Decision Memo schema and worked examples, governed under schemas/.
• The unreachable-engine stance map, built to v0.8 obligation 3, with published-equals-shipped asserted by test (tests/test_layer_conformance.py).

Specified, not built:

• The presentation record: what was rendered, to whom, when, in which locale and UI release.
• Required-highlight acknowledgment as a precondition of binding.
• The disposition vocabulary and its legality tables. Only accept reaches approval-engine; return, discuss, escalate and the rest are memo-level.
• The browser-facing OIDC client: authorization-code + S256 PKCE against key-cape, scopes [openid, approval:read, approval:approve].
• An L3 approver surface calling approval-engine's approval-entry mutation.
• The evidence bundle as an offline-verifiable export.

Out of Scope

• Authorization decisions — access-engine, always and only (statute §6).
• The approval object, its state machine, validity and consumption — approval-engine. Never cached, never inferred, never approval:consume.
• Approval doctrine — gate-house.
• Identity and authentication — key-cape. Imported, never invented. The assurance shape is key-cape's and is cited, not restated.
• The evidence archive — audit-core.
• Credentials materialized after a decision — secrets-engine.
• Notification transport, ticketing, general workflow.
• An approvals inbox. Foreclosed upstream as well as here: approval-engine exposes get-by-id only and will not add a list.
• L4/L5, QES, QTSP, qualified archival retention.
• The mandate graph — so a Stage 1 escalate is an assertion, not a verified claim.

What this repository does not claim

Stated here because a scope file that only lists capabilities overstates them.

• The decision path is not validated. GH-DEC-2026-010 requires a decision be attributable to access-engine; no consumer can satisfy that today because the envelope is unsigned (FLEX-WP-0024). This surface records decision_attributable: false and must not describe validation as complete.
• The residual is open. A compromised surface can present X and attest Y. GH-DEC-2026-012 states it is not closed and does not credit this repository with closing it.
• view_hash is not inside the approval entry. POST /entries discards its body by design. Correlation is (approval_id, subject, approved_at), so an auditor holding only the approval object cannot reach the presentation.
• Nothing is deployed, so nothing is observed in production and nothing is contained automatically.

Open

• Human token tenant — blocks T07. A human access token cannot carry tenant:platform today. Registration-bound versus directory-sourced; not this repository's to decide alone.
• The independent evidence path — mechanism unchosen; required by limit 3 before T08 ships.