The independent authority that determines whether a consequential action, or a decision, has earned the right to proceed.
AI agents now write code, reshape live infrastructure and draft the analysis behind engineering decisions, all at machine speed. IBE is the checkpoint they can’t talk their way past. A change is measured against eight safety checks before it can ship; a decision is measured against eight more before it can be signed. Either way the result is proven, or refused, with a signed reason. Automatic, explainable, and impossible to rubber-stamp.
Every AI change has to pass all eight safety checks. One failure and it’s stopped, automatically, every time.
Anything unclear, unsafe, or unauthorized is blocked, and comes back with a signed, plain-English reason you can act on.
The verdict is a fixed, formally-verified rule. It can’t be persuaded, rushed, or rubber-stamped. Only satisfied.
A change ships only if every check passes. A single failure means it’s refused. No exceptions, no overrides. The same change always gets the same answer. Flip the eight checks below and watch the verdict change in real time.
One path, no shortcuts. Every proposed change runs the same ten steps, from the original request to a signed verdict, and each step leaves tamper-proof evidence behind. Only after all of it does IBE decide.
Three real AI proposals: a broken rate limiter, code that quietly edits the wrong file, and infrastructure that would expose sensitive data. IBE caught and refused all three, each with a signed receipt you can re-verify. Open any one to see exactly why.
The same kernel answers a second question. Not has this change earned the right to execute, but has this decision earned the right to be signed. An engineering trade study or an acquisition decision becomes structured data: objectives, options, criteria, constraints, assumptions, risks and bias checks, each one explicit and testable. Eight checks then decide whether it can be signed. The answer is a signed Decision Package, or a signed refusal naming exactly what is missing.
A ground-vehicle platform choice, run on notional data and carried through a change in its assumptions. Every figure below comes from an actual run.
| Episode 1 | Trade study. Three platforms, five weighted criteria. One is screened out by a maturity floor before it is ever scored. The tracked platform is recommended, and the package states plainly that protection would have to move 11% to reverse the result. | Accepted |
| Episode 2 | The world moves. The buy quantity is cut, so the assumption the cost estimate rested on is invalidated. Not a single score has changed. The earlier recommendation can no longer be relied on, and a replacement cannot honestly be issued yet. | Blocked |
| Episode 3 | Re-decided. Cost is re-estimated at the new quantity. The answer moves to the wheeled platform, and a new signed package supersedes the first, carrying the reason it moved. | Superseded |
Episode 2 is the one that matters. A decision held in a document has no way to notice that its premise has expired, so the old recommendation goes on looking signed. Here the decision is part of the engineering model itself. Change anything it rests on and the signature stops verifying.
The verdict isn’t a judgment call. It’s math. The rules that grant permission and allow promotion are written as formal specifications and machine-checked, so we can prove the unsafe shortcuts simply can’t happen.
| Capability lifecycle | 28 states · safe |
| Capability · fault injected | 44 states · caught |
| Promotion lifecycle | 34 states · safe |
| Promotion · fault injected | 46 states · caught |
A working, coherent, production-oriented platform, not a finished product. It is deliberately explicit about what is real versus planned, and makes no false security or certification claims.
| IBE doctrine proof | Implemented |
| Generic assurance kernel | Implemented |
| Causal runtime assurance | Implemented |
| Capability security · single-process | Implemented |
| Decision profile | Implemented |
| Context packs · domain as data | Implemented |
| Structured elicitation · LLM elicitor | Partial |
| MBSE integration | Partial |
| Supply-chain provenance | Partial |
| Compliance evidence · OSCAL / 800-171 | Partial |
| Production SaaS / PaaS readiness | Research |