Add the agent companion to the security layer model
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v0.6 is dense, self-referential, and written for readers who already live in the
estate. That is acceptable in canon and poor as a contract for the nine
repositories yet to declare and for the Staff agents expected to conform.

The companion is the operative form: the rules, no change log, no review
archaeology. Machine-readable layer key, the three sanctioned Tooling shapes as
a table, the PEP obligations, the evidence bound with the two unsound claims
written out, the four agent rules, and the four conformance states. The statute
governs on disagreement, and a disagreement is reportable as a finding.

Its §9 records that operations is HelixForge's responsibility — reef, rail,
rapp, rein — consuming the NetKingdom security and approval framework, and that
the interface is NOT yet specified. What holds today is only what holds for any
consumer. No mapping of those concepts onto the layer model should be assumed
until it is written; the statute's §16 carries the same open question.

Its §10 states the two things the estate cannot do yet — nothing is observed in
production, nothing can be contained automatically — so no reader plans around
a capability that does not exist.

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
This commit is contained in:
tegwick 2026-08-29 09:25:40 +02:00
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@ -15,6 +15,9 @@ The dynamic, self-optimizing security platform is the long-term direction in
- [Security layer model](canon/standards/security-layer-model_v0.6.md) — how the
security estate is layered (Taxonomy / Tooling / Engines / Staff) and what each
layer may own
- [Agent companion](canon/standards/security-layer-model-companion_v0.1.md) — the
operative two-page form of that standard: what to declare, what binds you, what
you may never claim
- [Security scenario composition](canon/standards/security-scenario-composition_v0.1.md)
— deterministic, plan-only capability and trust composition
- [Posture feedback](canon/standards/posture-feedback_v0.1.md) — deterministic,

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@ -0,0 +1,192 @@
---
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_v0.6.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_v0.6.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_v0.6.md`.
**Owner:** gate-house. **Report a disagreement between this and the statute as a
finding.**