---
id: netkingdom-security-layer-model-v0.4
type: standard
title: "NetKingdom Security Layer Model v0.4"
domain: netkingdom
status: superseded
version: "0.4"
supersedes: canon/standards/security-layer-model_v0.3.md
owner: gate-house
publication_owner: net-kingdom
created: "2026-08-28"
updated: "2026-08-28"
last_reviewed: "2026-08-28"
review_interval: 3m
source_revision: "gate-house@516ed4e"
standard_token: security-layer-model_v0.4
superseded_by: canon/standards/security-layer-model_v0.5.md
assented_by:
  - "flex-auth FLEX-DEC-2026-001"
  - "kings-guard KG-DEC-2026-001"
  - "ops-warden ADR-0010"
  - "audit-core AUDIT-IN-0001 (evidence half, assent with conditions)"
related:
  - canon/standards/security-zones_v0.1.md
  - canon/standards/tenancy-posture_v0.1.md
  - canon/standards/credential-management_v0.2.md
  - gate-house/decisions/decisions.md
  - gate-house/history/2026-08-28-security-layer-model-and-gate-house-recut.md
---

# NetKingdom Security Layer Model v0.4

> **Superseded 2026-08-29 by [v0.5](security-layer-model_v0.5.md).** All four
> reviewing repositories returned findings; `flex-auth` contested §9.3 and was
> right. v0.5 splits §9.1 into two marks, rewrites §9.3, scopes §5, requires a
> local outbox in §9.4, and gives §11 a fourth conformance state.

## 1. Purpose

This standard states how NetKingdom's IT-security estate is layered, and what
each layer may and may not do. It answers one question:

> **Given a repository, which layer is it in, and what does that permit it to
> own?**

The layers are distinguished by **determinism** and by **the kind of artifact
the layer produces**, not by technical tier, deployment topology, or team.

It is not an org chart, not a network model, not a deployment topology, and not
a dependency graph. It does not assign work, and it does not replace any
repository's boundary contract; it constrains what such a contract may claim.

**What changed in v0.4.** `audit-core` assented to the approval evidence half
and corrected the rationale twice. v0.3 rested §9.4 on that repository's INTENT
principle 6, which is an aspiration; the shipped bound in its `docs/integrity.md`
is weaker and conditional. More consequentially, no append-only archive can prove
**omission at source** — a suppressed revocation leaves the chain intact — which
is now stated as an estate-wide doctrine constraint (§9.6) rather than left
implicit. `audit-core` was also referenced as an owner in v0.3 without appearing
in the §4 catalog at all; it is catalogued here, as an Engine, on its own
declaration. §15 records the change list.

**What changed in v0.3.** Two engines were seeded to own concepts v0.2 recorded
as unowned: `approval-engine` takes the approval object that §13 left homeless,
and `maturity-engine` takes graded progression — closing a §9.1 defect in
gate-house's own catalog claim, which asserted conformance review with no engine
to act through. §15 records the change list. v0.3 is **proposed**: the two new
engines are seeded by owner direction and have no other side to assent yet, and
the evidence half of the approval split needs `audit-core`'s assent.

**What changed in v0.2.** v0.1 was assented to by all three repositories whose
boundaries moved, and each returned a finding. v0.1 had one lane for a Staff
repository that legitimately touches Tooling — read-only diagnostics — which is
narrower than the estate as it actually stands, and a rule with no lane for a
real sanctioned case is satisfied by relabelling rather than by closing the gap.
v0.1 also catalogued a capability (§4, containment) that §5 forbade discharging,
and applied its reconstructability test to engines but not to the doctrine
gate-house feeds them. §15 records the full change list.

## 2. Authority and conformance

| Fact or rule | Authority |
| --- | --- |
| The layers, their definitions, and the rules between them | This standard, owned by gate-house |
| Which layer a given repository is in | This standard, §4 catalog |
| What a repository owns within its layer | That repository's `INTENT.md` and boundary contract |
| Whether a specific request is permitted | `access-engine` — never this standard |
| Whether a Tooling contact is sanctioned | The declaring repository, under the shapes in §5, reviewable by gate-house |
| Security doctrine and invariants | gate-house |
| Publication | net-kingdom canon |

A repository conforms when its `INTENT.md` declares its layer, its claims fall
within that layer's permissions (§3), and its Tooling contacts take one of the
sanctioned shapes in §5 or are declared as gaps under §5.3.

## 3. The layers

| Layer | Character | Produces | Deterministic |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Taxonomy** | cross-cutting language | terms, semantic contracts, standards | n/a — describes |
| **Tooling** | infrastructure and state | data structures, persistence | yes |
| **Engines** | interfaces for a modeled concept | APIs, contracts | yes |
| **Staff** | management, operations, change, controlling | specifications, decisions, workplans, tasks | **no** |

### 3.1 Taxonomy

Cross-cutting language. Taxonomy repositories define terms and semantic
contracts so the other layers interoperate without integration by
interpretation. They own no runtime position and no state any layer depends on.

`info-tech-canon` holds ecosystem-wide semantic contracts. NetKingdom-specific
security architecture — including this standard — is net-kingdom canon's.

### 3.2 Tooling

Deterministic infrastructure: data structures, persistence, and the consistent,
performant, scalable keeping of state. Much of it is third-party.

### 3.3 Engines

Deterministic APIs for a modeled concept — a user, a tenant, a zone, a secret,
an access rule. An engine's defining property is that **the same authoritative
input state yields the same result**. Engines are where the estate's
deterministic guarantees live, and therefore where every enforcement boundary
MUST sit.

A repository whose core function is inference or judgment fails this test by
construction and is Staff, however much of its work happens at runtime.

### 3.4 Staff

Interactive and non-deterministic. Staff is the management layer: operations,
change, innovation, and controlling. It works through agentic capability —
assistants and autonomous agents — and its artifacts are specifications,
decisions, workplans, and tasks.

Staff repositories MUST NOT hold state that another layer depends on at
runtime, and MUST NOT render or cache any decision an Engine is responsible for.

Acting at runtime does not make a repository an Engine. Being agentic makes it
Staff, and §5 governs how it acts.

## 4. Layer catalog

| Repository | Layer | Owns |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `info-tech-canon` | Taxonomy | ecosystem-wide semantic contracts and terminology |
| `net-kingdom` | Taxonomy | NetKingdom standards of record; publication |
| `key-cape` | Tooling | packaged identity tooling; IAM profile; authentication |
| `OpenBao` | Tooling | secret storage, leases, PKI, dynamic secret engines |
| `user-engine` | Engine | users, accounts, memberships |
| `tenant-engine` | Engine | tenant-as-an-entity facts |
| `zone-engine` | Engine | zone identity and membership — offline reference conformance per its 2026-08-23 disposition |
| `secrets-engine` | Engine | credential abstraction, custody, lifecycle |
| `audit-core` | Engine | audit event custody, retention, integrity verification, export — explicitly not a decision point (§9.6) |
| `access-engine` | Engine | **the policy decision** — the only decision point (§6) |
| `approval-engine` | Engine | the approval object — durable, authenticated, consumable, atomically supersedable (§9.4) |
| `maturity-engine` | Engine | graded progression against declared criteria and evidence; the gap register; capability readiness (§9.5) |
| `gate-house` | Staff | security doctrine, authority context, curriculum; **conformance review — through `maturity-engine` (§9.5)** |
| `ops-mason` | Staff | building and tearing down access routes and perimeters |
| `ops-warden` | Staff | operational access lanes, stewardship, runbooks; SSH certificate issuance |
| `kings-guard` | Staff | adaptive defence, observation; **containment — pending (§9.2)** |
| `whitehat-security` | Staff | offensive validation |

`access-engine` is the ruled name for the repository currently called
`flex-auth`; both denote the same authority until the governed rename completes.
Execution conditions for that rename are recorded in its migration decision, not
here.

## 5. The binding rule

> **Staff never touches Tooling directly. It acts only through Engine APIs.**

A Staff repository MUST NOT hold a direct client for a Tooling-layer system —
no direct database connection, no direct OpenBao client, no direct cluster
mutation — outside the shapes below. This is the architectural form of *no
privilege from cognition*, and it is deliberately mechanically checkable.

Three shapes are sanctioned. Everything else is a violation.

### 5.1 Read-only diagnostic observation

A Staff repository MAY read Tooling state for diagnostics where the owning
engine exposes no equivalent. It MUST be declared in the repository's
`INTENT.md`. It grants no write, and it is an engine gap to close, not a
standing arrangement.

### 5.2 Conduit

A Staff repository MAY run the **owner's** tool under the **caller's** identity,
supplying no authority of its own. The test is the supplied-authority property:
the conduit MUST NOT present its own credential, MUST NOT widen what the caller
could already do, and MUST be reconstructable as the caller's action in audit.

A conduit that presents its own token is not a conduit; it is §5.3 or a
violation. This shape MUST be declared, and the no-authority property SHOULD be
covered by a test.

### 5.3 Declared engine gap

Where a Staff repository must contact Tooling directly and no engine exposes the
capability, it MUST declare the contact rather than take an exemption. A
declared gap carries, machine-readably:

| Field | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| `capability` | what the contact does |
| `intended_owner` | the engine that should own it |
| `blocked_on` | why it cannot move today |
| `review` | a date, not "when convenient" |

A declared gap is **tracked non-conformance**, not conformance. It does not
expire on its own and it is not a licence to add more. It exists because a rule
offering no lane for a real sanctioned case gets satisfied by relabelling rather
than by closing the gap — and a tracked gap is visible, whereas a relabelled one
is not.

Prior art: `ops-warden` runs equivalent machinery for delegated lanes (27
catalog entries carrying `delegation:`, queryable via `warden route gaps`), and
has offered it as reusable.

## 6. One decision point

`access-engine` is the only policy decision point in NetKingdom. No other
repository, in any layer, may render or cache authorization decisions.

First ruled in `zone-engine/INTENT.md` §5 — *"flex-auth is the policy decision
point. It stays the only one."* The failure mode, from the same source: *"It
becomes a second decision point… it would arrive as a small convenience."*

### 6.1 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. Provenance MUST remain reconstructable from the engine's decision
record.

### 6.2 Doctrine reaches the decision as an input, or it is not applied

This rule binds gate-house on the same terms. **An authority ceiling, mandate
constraint, or operating-mode restriction that determines an outcome MUST reach
the decision either as an input claim on the request or as a rule in the
versioned policy package**, so that its application is reconstructable from the
decision record.

Doctrine that influences outcomes by any other route is a second decision point
wearing an author's hat. This is not a limit on gate-house's authorship; it is
what keeps that authorship auditable at decision time.

### 6.3 No Staff repository may host a decision point

A deterministic authority boundary inside a non-deterministic layer contradicts
the invariant the estate is built on. gate-house was re-cut on this ground.

## 7. Relationship to the Active Secrets Management Canon

```text
Staff       interactive, non-deterministic   ≈  Cognitive Plane
Engines     deterministic APIs               ≈  Authority Plane
Tooling     deterministic state              ≈  Execution Plane
Taxonomy    cross-cutting language
```

*Cognition proposes. Authority disposes. Infrastructure executes.* is therefore
NetKingdom's layering rule, not only its security maxim. §5 and §6 are that
principle applied to repositories rather than to requests.

## 8. Vocabulary demarcations

| Term | Belongs to | Not |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **access lane** | ops-warden, ops-mason (Staff) — how a worker reaches a host | the decision whether they may |
| **access rule** | access-engine (Engine) — whether an actor may act | the route by which they arrive |
| **control plane** | Engine layer | a Staff repository's self-description |
| **doctrine** | gate-house | a lane owner's runbook |
| **runbook** | the Staff repository stewarding the lane | a substitute for doctrine |
| **posture** | kings-guard publishes; gate-house defines its authority meaning; access-engine renders it | a privilege source |

Posture carries an asymmetry that MUST hold: adaptive systems may reduce
authority, require step-up, or request containment. They MUST NOT
probabilistically manufacture additional authority.

## 9. Capability assignment

### 9.1 The catalog may not assign what the rules forbid discharging

A Staff repository MUST NOT be catalogued in §4 as owning a capability that
requires a Tooling contact no engine exposes. Where the capability is intended
but the engine surface does not yet exist, the catalog entry MUST be marked
**pending** and the gap declared under §5.3.

v0.1 violated this: it catalogued kings-guard as owning containment while §5
forbade the only route to discharging it, making the capability zero rather than
degraded. Raised by kings-guard, KG-DEC-2026-001.

### 9.2 Containment is pending an engine surface

No engine exposes a containment surface today — nothing to reduce authority,
require step-up, or isolate a workload as a deterministic API. kings-guard's
containment claim is marked pending in §4 until one exists.

### 9.3 Degraded-mode fallback belongs inside the engine

Where a capability must survive partial failure, the fallback belongs to the
engine, not to Staff. The deterministic *fail to reduced authority* default is
`access-engine`'s, applied when it cannot reach its own inputs.

This keeps the decision at the decision point and keeps the fallback
deterministic — which a Staff-layer fallback could never be. It is also why
engine-unavailable is not grounds for a Staff break-glass path: an incident is
when an attacker most wants the shortcut, and a containment path that bypasses
the decision point becomes an authority path the moment it is subverted.

### 9.4 Approvals are an engine concept, not a Staff or audit concern

The approval object — durable, authenticated entries, distinct-approver
counting, atomic supersession, single consumption, revocation without holder
cooperation — is owned by `approval-engine`.

It is not Staff's: §3.4 forbids Staff holding state another layer depends on at
runtime. It is not the decision point's: an evaluator that owns the object it
evaluates is self-dealing. It is not the audit fabric's: an approval needs
mutable, in-path, current-state semantics, and an append-only archive is built
for the opposite property.

`access-engine` consumes approvals as **input claims** under §6.2 and never
mutates them. Every issuance, use, supersession, and revocation is emitted to
`audit-core`: the operative state and the evidence record are different
artifacts with different owners.

The evidence guarantee is bounded, and the bound is `audit-core`'s
`docs/integrity.md`, not its INTENT principle 6. An in-database hash chain
detects a rewritten payload only if the attacker does not also recompute the
suffix — which a database owner can. Detection against that class requires the
external chain-head attestation, and even with it the store is not WORM, object
lock, or archival custody. `tamper_evidence` is therefore conditional on live
preconditions, not a property of the store at rest, and approval events receive
exactly the guarantee every other source receives.

**Emission atomicity is `approval-engine`'s obligation.** An approval MUST NOT be
issued, consumed, superseded, or revoked without the corresponding event being
durably queued in the same transaction — transactional outbox or equivalent.
`audit-core` reports what it received and does not imply it is everything that
happened; without atomic emission the evidence half is silently incomplete and
nothing detects the gap. This is a condition of `audit-core`'s assent
(`AUDIT-IN-0001`) and belongs in `approval-engine`'s contract before the evidence
half is treated as load-bearing.

`audit-core` MUST NOT expose an approval-validity query. Records, yes; a verdict
on whether an approval is still valid, never — a consumer branching on that
answer would route an authorization decision through the audit fabric, which is
what this section exists to prevent. Callers needing current state ask
`approval-engine`.

### 9.5 Graded progression is an engine concept

Maturity — how far a subject has progressed against declared criteria and
submitted evidence — is owned by `maturity-engine`. Given the same criteria and
the same evidence it MUST return the same level; that determinism is what makes
it an Engine rather than an opinion.

The division with Staff: **gate-house judges and proposes; maturity-engine
computes and remembers.** Interpretation is inference and stays Staff. A
criterion that cannot be evaluated by rule is not yet a criterion.

This closes a defect in v0.2's own catalog: `gate-house` was assigned
conformance review with no engine to act through, which is exactly the §9.1
problem raised against the containment claim. Staff acts only through Engine
APIs, including gate-house.

**A maturity level MUST NOT gate a decision directly.** Under §6.1, compiled
data that determines an outcome is still deciding. If a level determines whether
an action is permitted, it MUST reach `access-engine` as an input claim or a
versioned policy rule under §6.2, never by a consumer branching on a fetched
level.

Approvals and maturity are deliberate opposites — a closed binary state machine
against an open graded ladder — and neither engine may drift toward the other.

### 9.6 Evidence proves alteration and truncation, not omission at source

An append-only archive with a verified hash chain proves that records were not
**altered or truncated after arrival**. It cannot prove that a record was never
sent. Against a compromised or buggy source, a suppressed event leaves the chain
perfectly intact and verification reports intact.

This bound is estate-wide and MUST be respected wherever doctrine relies on
audit. Statements of the form *"the audit record proves it happened"* are
unsound; the sound form is *"the archive proves the records it holds were not
altered or truncated after arrival"*.

Two consequences:

1. **Completeness is the source's obligation, not the archive's.** Any system
   whose evidence is load-bearing MUST make emission atomic with the state
   change it records (§9.4). An archive cannot retrofit completeness.
2. **The most valuable event to suppress is the negative one.** A withheld
   revocation, denial, or containment action is exactly what an adversary wants
   missing, and it is the case least visible to chain verification. Controls
   that depend on such events MUST NOT treat archive integrity as evidence of
   their occurrence.

Raised by `audit-core` while assenting to §9.4, against its own principle 6.

## 10. Changing layer

A repository's layer is not permanent. `zone-engine` changed layer in practice
when its runtime hypothesis was falsified.

A layer change MUST be recorded as a decision, MUST update the repository's
`INTENT.md`, and MUST obtain assent from the repositories whose boundaries move.
A repository MUST NOT acquire a new layer's permissions by gradual practice.

## 11. Conformance

Conformance has three states, and the distinction is the point:

| State | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| **Conforming** | no Tooling contact, or only §5.1/§5.2 shapes, declared |
| **Declared gap** | a §5.3 contact with owner, blocker, and review date — tracked non-conformance |
| **Undeclared violation** | anything else — a finding |

**Who must declare.** A repository the estate authors declares its layer in its
own `INTENT.md`, in its own voice. For a component the estate catalogues but does
not author — third-party or vendored, such as `OpenBao` — the §4 catalog row
**is** the declaration, and no `INTENT.md` obligation attaches. A rule that
assigns an obligation the holder cannot discharge is the §9.1 defect applied to
conformance rather than capability.

A layer stated *about* a repository by another repository is not a declaration.
Review notes, catalog rows, and correspondence record an intent to adopt; only
the repository's own file, in its own voice, conforms.

Mechanically checkable:

- every estate-authored repository in §4 declares its layer in its own
  `INTENT.md`;
- every direct Tooling client in a Staff repository maps to a declared §5.1,
  §5.2, or §5.3 entry;
- no repository other than `access-engine` exposes an authorization decision
  surface;
- no §4 capability is catalogued without an engine surface or a pending mark.

Requires review: whether claims stay inside layer permissions; whether compiled
or cached data has become an early decision (§6.1); whether doctrine is reaching
decisions as declared inputs (§6.2); whether the §8 vocabulary is used correctly.

## 12. The conformance loop

Doctrine no engine implements is fiction. The loop is normative, not
aspirational:

```text
gate-house asserts an invariant
      → the engines implement it, or declare a gap
      → whitehat-security tries to break it
      → kings-guard observes it in operation
      → findings return to gate-house as doctrine change
```

A finding that a rule is unsatisfiable is a **success** of this loop, not a
failure of the reporting repository. v0.2 exists because three repositories used
it on first contact.

## 13. Open gaps

Declared under §5.3 or raised as unowned capability, as of 2026-08-28:

| Gap | Declared by | Intended owner |
| --- | --- | --- |
| SSH-CA signing write (`VaultCA`, `bao kv put`) | ops-warden | secrets-engine |
| Authentication / assurance evidence | kings-guard | user-engine, access-engine |
| Secret-use evidence | kings-guard | secrets-engine |
| Containment surface | kings-guard | access-engine + runtime engines |
| Registry-snapshot digest in decision provenance | flex-auth | flex-auth (self-declared) |
| Approval storage and lifecycle — durable object, authenticated entries, atomic supersession | flex-auth | **`approval-engine`** — assigned in v0.3 (§9.4) |
| Approval evidence — record of issuance, use, supersession, revocation | gate-house | `audit-core` — **assented with conditions** (`AUDIT-IN-0001`) |
| Approval evidence custody stronger than the shipped bound — WORM, object lock, or transparency log | audit-core | unassigned — declared under §5.3, see below |
| Emission atomicity for approval state changes | audit-core | `approval-engine` — condition of the above assent (§9.4) |
| Conformance review has no engine surface | gate-house (self) | **`maturity-engine`** — assigned in v0.3 (§9.5) |

The approval gap is resolved in v0.3 by seeding `approval-engine` (§9.4), which
unblocks `FLEX-WP-0017` T03 and T05 once implemented. Its evidence half is
proposed to `audit-core` and awaits that repository's assent.

The approval evidence half is assented by `audit-core` with conditions, and one
of those conditions opened a new gap: approvals plausibly warrant custody
stronger than the shipped bound — WORM, object lock, or a transparency log —
which `audit-core` correctly says is an engine gap to declare rather than a
setting to enable. It is declared here, unassigned, because deciding whether
approvals need archival custody distinct from every other source is doctrine
work that has not been done. Until it is, approval evidence carries the same
guarantee as any other source, and §9.6 bounds what may be claimed from it.

Gaps are recorded here but tracked in `maturity-engine` (§9.5) once it exists;
this table is the interim register and should not outlive it.

## 14. Adoption

Status is **accepted**. All three repositories whose boundaries moved have
assented in writing, each with a decision record:

| Repository | Record | Outcome |
| --- | --- | --- |
| flex-auth | `FLEX-DEC-2026-001` | assent to all three items; one self-declared non-conformance; two rename conditions |
| kings-guard | `KG-DEC-2026-001` | assent; declined the offered §5 relaxation; raised §9.1 |
| ops-warden | `ADR-0010` | assent to all three; veto not exercised; offered the §5.3 amendment |
| audit-core | `AUDIT-IN-0001` | assent to the evidence half with conditions; corrected the rationale twice; raised §9.6 |

Adoption for a repository means its `INTENT.md` declares its layer, its
ownership claims fall inside that layer, its Tooling contacts are declared under
§5, and any shared boundary has been assented to by the other side.

**Adoption status as of 2026-08-28: seven of fifteen** estate-authored §4
repositories have declared in their own voice — `gate-house`, `flex-auth`,
`kings-guard`, `ops-warden`, `audit-core`, `approval-engine`, `maturity-engine`.
The remaining eight — `info-tech-canon`, `net-kingdom`, `key-cape`,
`user-engine`, `tenant-engine`, `zone-engine`, `secrets-engine`, `ops-mason`,
`whitehat-security` — carry a layering review note authored by `gate-house` and
have not answered it. Those notes state a layer but do not constitute a
declaration, and this standard does not claim estate-wide adoption on their
basis. Declaration requests are open as intakes in each.

## 15. Change log

v0.1 → v0.2:

1. **§5 restructured** into three sanctioned shapes. Added §5.2 conduit
   (ops-warden's question, ruled) and §5.3 declared engine gap (ops-warden's
   amendment, accepted).
2. **§6.2 added** — doctrine must reach the decision as an input claim or a
   versioned policy rule (flex-auth's boundary drawn back, accepted).
3. **§9 added** — the catalog may not assign a capability the rules forbid
   discharging; containment marked pending; degraded-mode fallback ruled into
   the engine (kings-guard's finding).
4. **§11 restructured** — conformance now has three states, distinguishing a
   tracked gap from an undeclared violation.
5. **§12 made normative**, with the explicit statement that an
   unsatisfiability finding is a success of the loop.
6. **§13 added** — open gaps register, including the unowned approval storage
   and lifecycle capability.
7. §4 catalog gained the pending mark and ops-warden's SSH certificate lane.

v0.2 → v0.3:

1. **§9.4 added** — approvals assigned to `approval-engine`, with the operative
   state and the evidence record separated between it and `audit-core`.
2. **§9.5 added** — graded progression assigned to `maturity-engine`, closing
   the §9.1 defect in gate-house's own conformance-review claim, and carrying
   the guardrail that a level may never gate a decision directly.
3. §4 catalog gained both engines; gate-house's conformance-review claim now
   names the engine it acts through.
4. §13 register updated: the approval hole is assigned, two new entries added.

Amended in place while `proposed`, 2026-08-28: §11 gained the who-must-declare
rule after a conformance sweep found the standard required an `INTENT.md`
declaration from `OpenBao`, which the estate does not author; and §14 gained the
honest adoption count.

v0.3 → v0.4:

1. **§4 catalog gained `audit-core`** as an Engine, on its own declaration. v0.3
   named it as an owner in §9.4 and §13 without cataloguing it — a §11 defect in
   the standard itself, raised by `audit-core`.
2. **§9.4 evidence rationale rewritten** to cite `audit-core`'s shipped
   `docs/integrity.md` bound rather than its INTENT principle 6, and to state
   that `tamper_evidence` is conditional on live preconditions.
3. **§9.4 gained emission atomicity** as `approval-engine`'s obligation, and the
   prohibition on `audit-core` exposing an approval-validity query.
4. **§9.6 added** — evidence proves alteration and truncation, not omission at
   source. Estate-wide; the sound and unsound forms of the claim are stated.
5. **§13** — evidence half recorded as assented with conditions; two new gaps:
   stronger approval custody (unassigned) and emission atomicity
   (`approval-engine`).

## 16. Open questions

- Whether approvals warrant archival custody stronger than every other audit
  source (§13), and if so which mechanism and who owns it.
- Whether other §4 repositories are missing layer declarations; `audit-core`
  flagged its own absence and asked whether the catalog needs the same
  correction elsewhere.
- Whether the gap register migrates from this standard into `maturity-engine`
  once that engine exists, leaving the standard to state the rules only.
- Whether Tooling warrants subdivision between third-party and homegrown.
- How a future `role-engine` divides responsibility with `access-engine`.
- Whether declared gaps need an estate-wide register rather than per-repository
  declarations; ops-warden's `warden route gaps` is candidate machinery.
- Whether non-security repositories adopt the same model.