Accept the security layer model; companion v0.2 to the repository root
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The standard is accepted at v0.7 on the owner's decision. §14 keeps two things
apart, as ops-warden asked: boundary assent, given by four repositories at the
version named in each record and undisturbed since; and revision review, where
all four reviewed v0.6 and every change in v0.7 is the adopted remedy of a
finding they raised. What is not claimed: nobody has reviewed v0.7 as text.

Accepting a standard nobody has re-read is deliberate. The estate will learn
more from using it than from another round of prose, and the v0.7 changes were
requested rather than invented. Findings against the accepted text stay
welcome — that is §12's normal business, not an exception.

The companion moves from canon/standards to the repository root as
SECURITY-COMPANION.md and becomes v0.2, so onboarding starts at the front door
rather than three directories down. One copy, not two: a second copy of a fact
is how the estate gets two sources for it.

v0.2 closes the gap access-engine found in v0.1 — it said publish your stance
map without saying where, and omitted the inventory obligation, so a repository
could satisfy it faithfully and no register would learn of its stance. It also
carries what v0.7 added: the corrected PEP obligations, the evidence threat
decomposition with its stated residual, cadence as MUST for load-bearing
sources with heartbeat for rare ones, the four agent rules and the glas-harness
seam, and the Railiance axes with their unsettled mapping.

It points readers at ops-warden for how to get things done. The companion says
what the rules are; ops-warden stewards the paths through them.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Assistant: claude-code
Assistant-Model: opus
Assistant-Process: 2564823@bnt-lap001
Assistant-Session: 2a7ed827-4928-4b9f-8613-9135c9cadfe9
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tegwick 2026-08-29 11:28:49 +02:00
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---
id: netkingdom-security-layer-model-companion-v0.1
type: standard-companion
title: "NetKingdom Security Layer Model — Agent Companion v0.1"
domain: netkingdom
status: proposed
version: "0.1"
companion_to: canon/standards/security-layer-model_v0.7.md
owner: gate-house
publication_owner: net-kingdom
created: "2026-08-29"
updated: "2026-08-29"
review_interval: 3m
standard_token: security-layer-model-companion_v0.1
---
# Security Layer Model — Agent Companion
**This is the operative form of `security-layer-model_v0.7.md`.** Same rules, no
change log, no review history. The statute governs where the two disagree; if you
find a disagreement, report it — that is a finding, not a formatting problem.
Read this if you are an agent or an operator working in a NetKingdom repository,
or if your repository has been asked to declare its layer.
---
## 1. The four layers
| Layer | You are this if you produce | Deterministic |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Taxonomy** | terms, semantic contracts, standards | n/a |
| **Tooling** | state and persistence | yes |
| **Engine** | a deterministic API for one modeled concept | yes |
| **Staff** | specifications, decisions, workplans, tasks | **no** |
One test decides it: **given the same authoritative inputs, do you always return
the same result?** If your core function is inference or judgment, you are Staff
— however much of your work happens at runtime.
Engines carry a role: **PDP** (decides — `access-engine` only), **PIP**
(supplies facts as claims), **Evidence** (`audit-core`), **Lifecycle** (an API
over Tooling it owns). A new engine is a PIP unless the statute says otherwise.
## 2. Declare your layer
Put this in your `INTENT.md` frontmatter. A layer someone else stated about you
is not a declaration.
```yaml
layer: Staff # Taxonomy | Tooling | Engine | Staff
role: null # Engines only: PDP | PIP | Evidence | Lifecycle
```
Then state it in prose, in your own voice, in the body. Contest the proposed
layer if it is wrong — a correction is worth more than a label.
Reference implementation of the machine-readable form: `ops-warden`'s
`layer.yaml`, `scripts/check_layer_conformance.py`, and
`tests/test_layer_conformance.py`.
## 3. The rules that bind everyone
1. **One decision point.** `access-engine` renders authorization decisions. No
other repository, in any layer, renders or caches one.
2. **Compiled data that determines an outcome is still deciding.** A registry,
cache, or schema that resolves a result before the engine runs has decided
early.
3. **Doctrine arrives as a claim.** Anything that changes an outcome — an
authority ceiling, a zone stance, a posture, a maturity level — reaches the
decision as a request claim or a versioned policy rule, never by a side
channel.
4. **Adaptive systems may only tighten.** Reduce authority, require step-up,
request containment — never manufacture authority.
5. **Staff never touches Tooling directly.** It acts through Engine APIs. See §4.
6. **Every allow has a lifetime.** A TTL, or a binding to a session or
obligation that ends.
## 4. If you touch Tooling
"Tooling" means a system catalogued as Tooling in the statute's §4 — today
`key-cape` and `OpenBao`. Uncatalogued infrastructure (the State Hub,
`llm-connect`) is outside this rule, but list it anyway so your check is total.
Three sanctioned shapes. Anything else is a violation:
| Shape | When | You must |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Read-only diagnostic** | no engine exposes the read | declare it; no writes; treat it as a gap to close |
| **Conduit** | you run the *owner's* tool under the *caller's* identity | present no credential of your own, widen nothing, stay reconstructable as the caller |
| **Declared gap** | you must contact Tooling and no engine exposes it | declare `capability`, `intended_owner`, `blocked_on`, `review` — machine-readably |
A conduit that presents its own token is not a conduit. A declared gap is
**tracked non-conformance**, not conformance — but declaring it is always better
than hiding it, and it will never be scored below silence.
## 5. If you cause side effects (you are PEP-shaped)
Being PEP-shaped does not change your layer. `ops-warden` issuing a certificate
and `ops-mason` opening a route are both Staff and both PEP-shaped.
1. **No side effect without a decision record** naming the request it was
rendered for.
2. **Never cache the verdict.** Caching an input claim under its own freshness
rule is fine; caching the answer is a second decision point.
3. **Publish your unreachable-engine stance** — total, per zone or equivalent,
no implicit default, no per-call discretion. Reference shape: `ops-warden`
`ADR-0009`.
4. **Stay reconstructable**, within the bound in §6.
If `access-engine` is reachable but degraded, the fallback is the engine's. If it
is unreachable, the behaviour is necessarily yours — which is why it must be
declared in advance rather than decided in the moment.
## 6. What you may never claim about evidence
An append-only archive with a verified chain proves records were **not altered
or truncated after arrival**. It proves nothing about an event never sent.
- ✗ "the audit record proves it happened"
- ✗ "there is no record, so it did not happen"
- ✓ "the archive proves the records it holds were not altered or truncated after arrival"
The event an adversary most wants missing is the negative one — a revocation, a
denial, a containment action. If a control's soundness depends on an event being
present, that evidence is **load-bearing** and its emission must be atomic with
the state change, queued locally. Otherwise it is **attributive**: seek
atomicity, and if you trade it away deliberately, declare the trade and never
describe the trail as complete.
If you emit adaptive-relevant events, publish an expected cadence. A drop below
it is a finding. Silence is a signal.
## 7. If you are an agent
Same layer as your human colleagues, different blast radius:
1. **No standing credential.** Authority is per task, time-bounded, attributable.
2. **Tool use is a conduit or an Engine API.** There is no third route.
3. **Your memory is not a state plane.** Memory, tool-call traces, and prompt
caches must not become state another layer depends on unless catalogued.
4. **Every action is reconstructable as the caller's action.**
Tool availability is not permission. A tool being callable says the operation
exists, not that you may invoke it.
## 8. Conformance: four states
| State | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| **Conforming** | no Tooling contact, or only declared diagnostic/conduit shapes |
| **Blocked-clean** | the capability does not exist because no engine exposes it, and you make no Tooling contact |
| **Declared gap** | a declared §5.3 contact — tracked non-conformance |
| **Undeclared violation** | anything else |
**Blocked-clean is not worse than conforming.** Declining a shortcut and leaving
a capability at zero is compliance at cost. It will never be ranked below a
repository that quietly opened a client and said nothing.
## 9. Consuming NetKingdom security from outside
Operations is **HelixForge's** responsibility — its reef, rail, rapp, and rein
concepts — and NetKingdom provides the security and approval framework those
operations consume.
**That interface is not specified yet.** What holds today is only what holds for
any consumer: authorization decisions come from `access-engine`, approvals are
objects in `approval-engine` consumed as claims, credentials are materialized by
`secrets-engine` after a decision, and evidence goes to `audit-core` under the
bound in §6. A HelixForge component that causes a protected side effect is
PEP-shaped and §5 applies to it.
What is **not** settled: how a reef, rail, rapp, or rein maps onto the layer
model — whether they are subjects a decision is rendered about, principals that
request, PEP-shaped consumers, or none of these. Until that is written, do not
assume a mapping. Raising it is welcome.
## 10. Two things the estate cannot do yet
Stated so nobody plans around a capability that does not exist:
- **Nothing is observed in production.** `kings-guard` has reported that it has
never seen a real event. Do not cite "observed in operation" as evidence.
- **Nothing can be contained automatically.** There is no actuation surface —
no API to reduce authority, require step-up, or isolate a workload. The
capability is at zero, not degraded.
---
**Statute:** `canon/standards/security-layer-model_v0.7.md`.
**Known gap in this version:** §5.3 says publish your stance map but not *where*,
and omits the statute's §6.4 inventory obligation — a repository could satisfy
this document and no register would learn of its stance. Fixed in v0.2; until
then read statute §6.4 and §13.1.
**Owner:** gate-house. **Report a disagreement between this and the statute as a
finding.**

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@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ id: netkingdom-security-layer-model-v0.7
type: standard
title: "NetKingdom Security Layer Model v0.7"
domain: netkingdom
status: proposed
status: accepted
version: "0.7"
supersedes: canon/standards/security-layer-model_v0.6.md
owner: gate-house
@ -986,9 +986,21 @@ do while the register is nearly empty.
## 14. Adoption
Status is **proposed** — the frontmatter is authoritative, and v0.2 was the last
version to reach `accepted`. Four repositories have assented, each with a record,
and all four returned findings on the versions since:
Status is **accepted**, on the owner's decision of 2026-08-29.
Two things that acceptance does and does not mean, kept apart because
`ops-warden` asked for the distinction:
| | |
| --- | --- |
| **Boundary assent** | given by the four repositories below, at the version named in each record, and undisturbed since |
| **Revision review** | each of the four reviewed v0.6 and returned findings; **every change in v0.7 is the adopted remedy of a finding they raised** |
| **Not claimed** | no repository has reviewed v0.7 *as text*. The first revision review will confirm or correct it |
Accepting a standard nobody has re-read is a deliberate call: the estate learns
more from using it than from another round of prose refinement, and the changes
in v0.7 were requested rather than invented. Findings against the accepted text
remain welcome and are §12's normal business, not an exception.
| Repository | Record | Outcome |
| --- | --- | --- |
@ -1218,14 +1230,11 @@ v0.3 → v0.4:
text it grades. Raised by `access-engine`. Its two substantive points remain
live: observation in production is unstaffed (§12) and actuation has no surface
(§9.2).
- The **agent companion** (`security-layer-model-companion_v0.1.md`) is the
operative form of this statute. The statute governs on disagreement, and a
disagreement is a finding. Its §5.3 omits where a stance map is published and
omits the §6.4 inventory obligation entirely — a repository could satisfy the
companion faithfully, publish into its own repo, believe itself conforming, and
no register would learn of it. Raised by `access-engine` in answer to the
question of what would show the companion insufficient. To be fixed in
companion v0.2.
- The **working companion** (`net-kingdom/SECURITY-COMPANION.md`, v0.2, root of
the repository for onboarding) is the operative form of this statute. The statute governs on disagreement, and a
disagreement is a finding. The v0.1 gap `access-engine` found — publish
your stance map, but nowhere saying where, and no inventory obligation — is
fixed in v0.2 §5.3.
- How the Railiance operational axes meet this model beyond §20's first
statement, which is deliberately minimal.