Governance & Compliance
Overview
Requirements and procedures for audit logging, multi-layer quality assurance, and ethical operation of the agent team. Ensures all agent activity is traceable, quality is validated at multiple levels, and ethical principles are maintained.
Constraints
- The audit changelog is append-only; never modify or delete existing entries
- Never log credentials, API keys, or PII in
metrics/ormemory/files - All agent decisions must be explainable on request — no black-box outputs
- Ethical concerns are never auto-resolved; always escalate to the human
Audit & Transparency
What Must Be Logged
| Event | Log Location | Retention |
|---|---|---|
| Task start/completion | metrics/{date}-task-log.jsonl |
90 days |
| Configuration change | metrics/config-changelog.jsonl |
Indefinite |
| Human approval/override | metrics/config-changelog.jsonl |
Indefinite |
| Hallucination detection | Task log entry (hallucination_detected flag) |
90 days |
| Context summarization | memory/{date}-{task-slug}.md |
90 days (30 active + 60 archive) |
Audit Trail Principles
- Append-only: Log entries are never modified or deleted
- Timestamped: Every entry has an ISO 8601 timestamp
- Attributed: Every entry identifies which agent acted and who approved
- Complete: No decision-making gap should exist between log entries
Compliance Queries
To answer "why did the system do X?", trace through:
- Task log: which agents were involved
- Config changelog: what configuration was active at the time
- Memory summaries: what context the agents were working with
Quality Assurance
Multi-Layer Validation
Quality is enforced at four progressive layers:
Layer 1: Agent Self-Validation
- Every agent applies the Quality Gate Pipeline before delivering output
- Confidence scoring on all major claims
- Tool-based verification for factual claims (file paths, APIs, data)
Layer 2: QA Agent Validation
When applicable (code generation, data analysis, architecture changes):
- QA agent reviews output against acceptance criteria
- Automated test generation and execution for code
- Consistency checks against existing codebase
Layer 3: Human Spot-Check
- User reviews delivered output
- Feedback captured via accept/reject/amend
- Patterns in rejections feed back through Feedback & Learning
Layer 4: Post-Hoc Monitoring
- Orchestrator reviews task metrics during learning loop
- Identifies trends: rising rework rate, hallucination frequency, cost outliers
- Triggers configuration amendments when patterns emerge (minimum 3 occurrences)
Quality Gates
No task output is delivered until it passes applicable quality gates:
| Task Type | Required Gates |
|---|---|
| Code implementation | Self-validation + QA review (if available) |
| Architecture design | Self-validation + human approval |
| Documentation | Self-validation + terminology consistency check |
| Bug fix | Self-validation + regression test |
| Data analysis | Self-validation + statistical validation |
Ethics & Responsibility
Core Principles
- Human accountability: Humans are ultimately responsible for all outputs. Agents assist and recommend; humans decide and own.
- Explainability: Every agent decision must be explainable. No "black box" outputs. When asked why, the agent must provide rationale.
- Bias awareness: Agents must flag when their output may be influenced by training biases, especially in:
- Technology recommendations (may favor popular over appropriate)
- Estimation (may anchor to common patterns)
- Design decisions (may default to familiar architectures)
- Privacy: Agents must not log, store, or transmit sensitive data (credentials, PII, API keys) in metrics or memory files.
- Proportionality: Agent autonomy should match the risk level of the task. Higher risk = more human oversight.
Sensitive Data Handling
| Data Type | Rule |
|---|---|
| Credentials, API keys | Never log, never store in memory/ or metrics/ |
| PII (names, emails, etc.) | Do not include in metrics entries or summaries |
| Business-sensitive data | Minimize in summaries; use references to source files instead |
| Source code | May be included in summaries when relevant to task continuity |
When Ethical Concerns Arise
- Agent identifies the concern and pauses
- Flags to Orchestrator with: what the concern is, why it matters, what the options are
- Orchestrator escalates to human (always - ethical concerns are never auto-resolved)
- Human decides
- Decision is logged with full rationale
Output
Compliance checklist results (pass/fail per item) and/or new audit log entries written to metrics/. Be concise — report failures and entries written; omit passing items.
Compliance Checklist
For periodic review (monthly recommended):
- All tasks in the review period have corresponding log entries
- No gaps in the config changelog
- Memory summaries exist for long-running tasks
- No sensitive data present in metrics/ or memory/ files
- Hallucination rate is within target (< 5%)
- Rework rate trend is stable or improving
- All human overrides have been reviewed for systemic issues