GovEngine

GovEngine is a carrier-agnostic deterministic governed-runtime kernel for portable artifact governance and policy-gated controlled execution.

It consumes SCLite as its contract lifecycle layer and provides reusable services around artifact state/transition boundaries, policy decisions, execution-contract shaping, execution-ticket checks, command-shape normalization, and dry-run result assembly. Security-oriented action/tool/scope/signal helpers remain available as an optional profile for hosts such as Ravenclaw, not as the neutral core itself.

Why it exists

AI-assisted security workflows need a hard boundary between:

1. what an agent or caller wants;
2. what policy allows;
3. what execution shape was prepared;
4. what was approved;
5. what was dry-run or executed;
6. what evidence can be reviewed.

SCLite defines the auditable contract artifacts for that lifecycle. GovEngine is the reusable Python service layer that consumes those contracts and helps a host runtime enforce them without relying on prompt text alone.

Dependency direction

Ravenclaw -> GovEngine -> SCLite

• SCLite owns schema-backed lifecycle artifacts and validation.
• GovEngine owns reusable governed-execution helpers that consume SCLite artifacts.
• Ravenclaw remains the reference security runtime/control plane and concrete integration host.
• Tecrax is reserved as a future infrastructure-operations runtime/profile on the same foundation.

GovEngine is not Ravenclaw, Tecrax, Logdash, an LLM agent loop, a scanner, or a protocol adapter.

What GovEngine includes now

• a public surface registry that separates neutral artifact-governance core, controlled-execution core, and optional security-profile helpers;
• an explicit govengine.security_profile facade for optional security-profile helper discovery;
• execution-contract shaping/redaction helpers;
• artifact descriptor/state/transition boundary helpers;
• SCLite lifecycle status bridge and lightweight lifecycle transition gate/controller;
• artifact deconfliction/change-order helpers and lightweight state-index summaries;
• signature/trust policy bridge helpers with host-provided signer/verifier ports and deterministic demo ports for fixtures;
• approved-spec and execution-ticket validation helpers;
• controlled execution gate helpers with dry-run as the default runner path;
• command-shape helpers;
• dry-run result assembly helpers;
• optional security-profile helpers for action schema/validation/compilation, capability recipes, tool registry, semantic-loss policy, scope checks, policy gateway, and signal/analysis/evidence-confirmation contracts;
• explicit SCLite integration seams;
• focused standalone pytest coverage and GitHub Actions CI.

What it intentionally does not include yet

• live subprocess execution backend;
• raw artifact storage/writes;
• Logdash UI/API routes;
• OpenClaw, MCP, A2A, or other protocol adapters;
• LLM provider integrations;
• Ravenclaw-specific personas, workspace state, or campaign UX;
• production-readiness claims;
• PKI, CA, KMS, key storage, or production identity proof.

Current status

GovEngine is a pre-alpha 0.1.x helper package. The package is importable, tested, and published through 0.1.6. The 0.1.3 line added artifact-governance control gates while keeping live execution disabled by default. The 0.1.4 line added a surface registry that separates the neutral core from optional security-profile helpers. The 0.1.5 line adds a security-profile facade for one-entrypoint helper discovery. The 0.1.6 line consumes sclite-core>=0.3.5,<0.4, includes thin scoped-ticket / receipt-bounded-evidence gates, and contains deterministic demo signer/verifier ports for host proof fixtures; those ports exercise signing/trust seams without claiming PKI/key ownership. Ravenclaw has a host adapter for the control gates and still owns concrete runtime execution.

Installation

Install the current public package from PyPI:

python -m pip install govengine

GovEngine depends on the PyPI distribution sclite-core while preserving the Python import package sclite.

For local development:

python -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install -e '.[dev]'
python -m pytest -q

Minimal smoke example

from govengine import public_surface_index, security_profile_index
from govengine.action_compiler import compile_action_spec
from govengine.execution.runner import legacy_action_spec_dry_run_result

assert [surface.name for surface in public_surface_index()] == [
    "artifact_governance_core",
    "controlled_execution_core",
    "security_profile_helpers",
]
assert security_profile_index()["entrypoint"] == "govengine.security_profile"

compiled = compile_action_spec({
    "action_type": "single_probe",
    "capability": "http_probe",
    "tool": "curl",
    "args": ["https://example.com"],
})

receipt = legacy_action_spec_dry_run_result(
    compiled_action=compiled,
    planned_commands=[["curl", "https://example.com"]],
)
assert receipt["status"] == "dry-run"

Documentation

• PUBLIC_STATUS.md — current maturity and non-claims.
• CHANGELOG.md — notable public changes.
• CONTRIBUTING.md — contribution and boundary rules.
• SECURITY.md — security reporting and package safety boundaries.
• PUBLISHING.md — publishing/PyPI readiness checklist.
• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md — package shape and dependency boundaries.
• docs/SCLITE_INTEGRATION.md — how GovEngine consumes SCLite.
• docs/API_BOUNDARY.md — owned vs excluded surfaces.
• docs/VALIDATION.md — local checks and non-claims.
• docs/ROADMAP.md — staged extraction roadmap.

Safety boundary

GovEngine should preserve deterministic governance over prompt-only behavior. GovEngine must never execute directly from raw intent: execution requires a prepared execution contract, valid policy decision, approved execution ticket, valid signature/trust decision, and allowed runner profile.

DryRunRunner/dry-run behavior remains the default. Live execution backends are disabled by default; any future LocalSubprocessRunner must be optional, policy-enabled, negative-tested, and never the default. Controlled execution depends on lifecycle gates and signing/trust gates, with Ravenclaw retaining the concrete runtime adapter until reviewed. Demo signing helpers are fixture ports only: they bind a deterministic signature to an artifact digest for tests/reviewer demos and must not be presented as cryptographic identity, PKI, CA, KMS, or trust-store support.