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Every tool-call authorization and every human adjudication emits a record envelope; retrieval verdicts emit envelopes when artifact signing is enabled for your organization. There is no additional code; the audit trail activates automatically from the same visiq() call. Envelopes are persisted server-side, off the request path, and then cryptographically attested: each one receives an asynchronous Ed25519 receipt, is committed to a Merkle batch whose root is signed by an HSM-backed key and countersigned by an independent RFC 3161 timestamp authority, and takes its place in a hash-chained transparency log. Decision Receipts covers the cryptography in depth.

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What gets recorded

Each decision produces one envelope. An action-governance denial looks like this:
source tells you which subsystem produced the decision, and each source carries its own decision vocabulary: The event field holds what happened — the payload the cryptographic receipt later signs — and attestation holds the decision metadata, both shaped per source:
  • action — event: { target_app, action, context }, attestation: { reason, rule_id, mode }. mode records the agent’s mode at decision time — enforce, monitor, or off (an off-mode call is permitted without evaluation but still recorded).
  • retrieval — event: { operation, resource_type, resource_metadata }, attestation: { reason_code, reason, rule_id }.
  • hitl — event: { hitl_item_id, category, target_app, action, context, allow_decision_id }, attestation: { responded_by, responded_at, ai_recommended_rule }.
Human adjudications are first-class evidence. When a responder approves or rejects a held action, a separate hitl envelope records who responded and when, linked back to the originating decision via decision_id — and it receives its own cryptographic receipt like any other decision.
At the moment an envelope is ingested, the database also pins a content hash over its event in a generated column the application cannot write. Verification later recomputes it, proving the record was not edited even in the window between ingest and signing.

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How records become tamper-evident

Persisting the envelope is step one. An asynchronous pipeline — entirely off the decision hot path, adding zero latency to your agents — turns each envelope into independently verifiable evidence:
  1. Ed25519 leaf receipt — the envelope’s event is canonicalized, hashed, and signed. The receipt (signature, public key, payload hash) is stored separately from the envelope it attests.
  2. Merkle batching — a background worker gathers unbatched receipts and commits their leaf hashes to a single Merkle root.
  3. HSM root signature — the root is signed once with an HSM-backed key in AWS KMS. The private key never leaves the HSM.
  4. RFC 3161 timestamp — DigiCert’s timestamp authority countersigns the root: an independent third party attests when the batch existed.
  5. Hash-chained checkpoints — each signed batch commits to the previous batch’s root, forming an append-only transparency log whose checkpoints are published to write-once (WORM) object storage as an external witness. Deleting, reordering, or backdating any batch breaks the chain detectably — even for VisIQ.
This is the Certificate Transparency model: one HSM signature and one third-party timestamp attest an entire batch, so 100% of records are signed and independently timestamped at any decision volume.

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Verify a record in one call

You don’t hand-roll any cryptography. One request re-derives and re-checks the full attestation chain:
It runs six independent checks and returns per-check evidence: verified is true only when every applicable check passes. A freshly emitted record reports attestationStatus: "timestamp_pending" until the next batch sweep commits it — typically within a minute or two. The dashboard runs this same verification for you: every governed event row (Harness → Runtime Enforcement) carries a record pill, and clicking through opens the record’s verification page with the full per-check breakdown.

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What the audit trail proves

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Consuming the trail

  • Dashboard — Harness → Runtime Enforcement streams every governed event with its record attached; agent pages and the Escalations queue link to the same records.
  • Query APIs — GET /v1/allow/audit-log and GET /v1/recall/audit-log return the paginated decision logs, filterable by agent, decision, and date range.
  • Log streaming — stream decision envelopes and audit events to your SIEM. Datadog and Elasticsearch destinations are configured under Settings → Log Streaming (organization scope) or from the Integration → Connectors Log Streaming cards. Delivery is cursor-tracked: a failed batch is retried, never dropped.
  • Evidence packs — export a signed, per-agent evidence bundle over a date range from the agent’s dashboard page, sized for handing to an auditor.
Cryptographic receipt issuance is plan-dependent. On every plan, all decisions are still recorded in the queryable audit logs above.

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Next steps

Decision Receipts

The exact cryptography — canonicalization, signatures, Merkle proofs, timestamps — and how to verify offline.

Action Governance

How tool-call authorization decisions are made.

Retrieval Governance

How retrieval verdicts govern what context your agents see.

Platform Automation

Authenticating scripts and CI against the management API.