How it works

Five steps, no surprises.

A proposal goes in. A sealed allow or deny comes out, with the exact rules that produced it and a record you can verify years later.

Canonicalize the proposal

The structured proposal is rewritten into one stable form (sorted keys, normalized values) and hashed with SHA-256, so the same logical request always has the same identity.

input_hash = sha256(canonical_json(proposal))

Load the pinned policy

Policies are versioned and immutable once activated. The active policy is pinned by hash; if the file no longer matches its pin, every decision is denied until it is reviewed and re-pinned.

# any edit without a re-pin DENY_POLICY_HASH_MISMATCH

Evaluate, deterministically

Rules are applied in a fixed order. Deny takes precedence; anything not explicitly allowed is denied. The evaluator performs no network, clock, filesystem or environment access.

decision: allow | deny reason_codes: ["DENY_RULE_MATCH:..."]

Seal and chain

The proposal hash, policy hash, decision and reasons are written to an append-only ledger. Each entry carries the hash of the one before it. An allow that cannot be recorded does not happen.

entry_hash = sha256(seq, decision, decision_hash, prior_entry_hash)

Anchor and replay

The ledger head is signed and committed to version control. Later, any decision can be replayed against its original policy version; signatures and the chain prove nothing was removed or rewritten.

$ cg_ledger_anchor -Verify ANCHOR_VERIFY_OK anchors=1

Decision model

Binary outcomes, explicit reasons.

The sealed outcome is always allow or deny. Escalation, approval and quarantine are dispositions on a deny, never a third answer.

Situation	Outcome	Reason code (example)
Nothing in the policy allows the action	deny	`DEFAULT_DENY`
An explicit deny rule matches	deny	`DENY_RULE_MATCH`
An overlay tries to widen the base policy	deny	`DENY_OVERLAY_WIDEN_FORBIDDEN`
Policy file differs from its pin	deny	`DENY_POLICY_HASH_MISMATCH`
An allow rule matches and nothing denies	allow	`ALLOW_RULE_MATCH`

Ready when you are

See where it is enforced.

The same evaluator guards commits, CI, AI assistants and the file system.

Explore enforcement