Output is not authority.

THE ACTION BOUNDARY

Governance begins when output can change reality.

Source, configuration, memory, permissions, records, communications, and financial state require more than a plausible model response.

01 · Proposal — A structured request, not permission.
02 · Policy — Eligibility checked against declared rules.
03 · Evidence — Proposal, state, and decision bound together.
04 · Authorization — Human or deterministic authority where required.
CONTROL BOUNDARY
05 · Application — A separate path performs the allowed operation.
06 · Record + Recovery — Outcome is inspectable; recovery was considered first.

FAILURE MODES

Design for what the happy path hides.

Stale Context

The proposal may be based on source or state that has already changed.

Unsupported Action

The requested operation can fall outside the system’s declared authority.

Approval Mismatch

A decision can be detached from the exact proposal or evidence it was meant to cover.

Partial Application

One step may succeed while another fails, leaving state between intended outcomes.

Regression

An approved change can still be incorrect or break behavior elsewhere.

Missing Evidence

A log that cannot bind decision, policy, state, and result is not a useful control record.

HUMAN-IN-THE-LOOP

Stronger consequence. Stronger authority.

Human approval is not a ritual for every action. It is one boundary among several, applied where consequence, reversibility, confidence, and external impact warrant it.

Observe

Read-only analysis and drafts.

Constrain

Known tools, schemas, and reversible scope.

Authorize

Explicit approval for consequential durable change.

EVIDENCE + PROVENANCE

Bind the decision to the thing decided.

Hashes can detect byte changes. They do not authenticate a human, make a record immutable, or create an independent security boundary.

RECOVERY BEFORE MUTATION

Approval is not proof of correctness.

A recovery path should exist before durable state is changed. Regression tests, outcome checks, and explicit failure handling remain necessary after authorization.

PUBLIC PROOF

CLU explores the boundary in source-change systems.

CLU Governance

CLU evaluates AI-proposed source changes against local policy, binds the decision to evidence, and keeps approval and application outside its current authority.

BOUNDED CLAIMS

What this work is not.

This work does not provide legal advice or compliance certification. CLU is pre-alpha: its eligibility evidence is separate from authorization and application, and does not establish authenticated approval, immutable records, or guaranteed recovery.