net-kingdom/canon/standards/security-layer-model_v0.2.md

---
id: netkingdom-security-layer-model-v0.2
type: standard
title: "NetKingdom Security Layer Model v0.2"
domain: netkingdom
status: superseded
version: "0.2"
supersedes: canon/standards/security-layer-model_v0.1.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@4f618b4"
standard_token: security-layer-model_v0.2
superseded_by: canon/standards/security-layer-model_v0.3.md
assented_by:
  - "flex-auth FLEX-DEC-2026-001"
  - "kings-guard KG-DEC-2026-001"
  - "ops-warden ADR-0010"
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 v0.2

> **Superseded 2026-08-28 by [v0.3](security-layer-model_v0.3.md)**, which assigns
> the approval and maturity concepts §13 recorded as unowned. The assent record in
> §14 remains the basis on which the model was accepted; v0.3 changes §4, §9, and
> §13 only.

## 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 v0.2.** 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 |
| `access-engine` | Engine | **the policy decision** — the only decision point (§6) |
| `gate-house` | Staff | security doctrine, authority context, conformance review, curriculum |
| `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.

## 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 |

Mechanically checkable:

- every repository in §4 declares its layer in `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 | **unowned — see below** |

The approval gap is the one open architectural hole. It is not gate-house's
(§3.4 forbids Staff holding state another layer depends on at runtime) and not
access-engine's (it does not own the organizational approval lifecycle). It
blocks `FLEX-WP-0017` T03 and T05. Assigning it requires a decision and the
assent of the receiving repository; this standard records the gap and does not
assign 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 |

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.

## 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.

## 16. Open questions

- Who owns approval storage and lifecycle (§13). The only structural hole.
- 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.