Concept
The execution chain
Most governance tools answer one question: was this call allowed? That answer is worth very little on its own. An auditor asking about a single API call six months from now actually needs seven answers, and each one has to be independently checkable.
Aarmos models those seven as a chain. Every other concept in these docs is a detailed view of one link.
- 01
Authority
Who is answerable for this being permitted at all?
The root of every chain. Authority is held by a person or an organisation, never by an agent. Everything below it is derived, and nothing below it can exceed it.
- 02
Invocation
What started this?
The trigger — a person typing, a schedule firing, another system calling in. An action whose invocation cannot be named is not governed, however well-behaved it looks.
- 03
Actor
Who is acting right now?
The agent, sub-agent, or process taking the step. Actors are distinct from the authority behind them, which is what makes delegation auditable rather than assumed.
- 04
Decision attempt
What is being asked?
A single attempt to do something consequential. It exists whether or not it is permitted — refusals are first-class, not gaps in the record.
- 05
Effective policy
Which rules apply, exactly?
One resolved artifact with one digest, derived from every source that applies to this actor and this decision. The receipt cites the digest, so 'the policy said so' is checkable.
- 06
Verdict
What was decided, and why?
Allow, ask, or deny, with the specific clause that produced it and the source that contributed the clause.
- 07
Evidence
What can be proved later, without us?
A signed, hash-chained receipt that verifies offline against the open AVAR spec, long after the runtime that produced it has stopped.
Why the order matters
The chain is evaluated in order, and each link is admitted before the next is considered. Whether an actor may act at all is settled before anyone asks whether this particular action is permitted.
That sequencing is deliberate. If an expired delegation reached policy evaluation and came back allowed, the record would read as governed when it was not — a worse outcome than a plain refusal, because it survives review.
One chain, every distribution
The same chain is evaluated wherever Aarmos runs — the local runtime, the web app, an embedded deployment. There is one set of decision semantics, not one per surface, so a verdict does not depend on where it was reached.
Keep reading
- Effective policy — how many sources become one artifact with one digest.
- Delegation — how authority travels to an actor, and how it is taken back.
- Policy lifecycle — how a rule gets from an idea to something that governs.
- AVAR receipts — what the evidence link actually contains.