Governed evidence · portable verification

Verify what was authorized, attempted, and observed.

For consequential actions that reach supported Aarmos origins, Aarmos preserves signed evidence about the Decision, applicable Authority, Attempt, and available Effect observations. That evidence can be verified without contacting an Aarmos service.

Verification establishes the integrity of the recorded evidence and that the artifact’s signatures validate against the supplied trust root. It does not by itself prove that every path was governed or that a downstream Outcome occurred.

Verify an artifact Read the Prove Field Guide

Illustrative evidence view

One governed consequence, without collapsing its lifecycle.

Each stage is recorded separately. A later stage may be unknown, uncertain, unavailable, or not tracked without changing what an earlier stage established.

Governed consequence

email.send

Example · no customer data

1
Decision
What policy decided
ALLOW
2
Authority
What exact permission applied
ESTABLISHED
3
Attempt
Whether protected execution was entered
ENTERED
4
Effect
What the boundary actually observed
PROVIDER ACCEPTED
5
Outcome
Optional downstream result, when available
NOT TRACKED

Signature

Valid

Chain

Intact

Verification basis

Supplied trust root

Three distinct terms

Receipt is not Effect.

Receipt: The signed record or container associated with a governed consequence.
Evidence: The recorded facts, provenance, and integrity material carried or referenced by that record.
Effect: A separately established observation of what happened outside the authorization Decision, only up to the boundary’s declared evidence ceiling.

A valid receipt does not, by itself, prove that an Effect occurred.

Verification ceiling

What verification tells you — and what it doesn’t.

Verification evaluates the supplied artifact. It does not independently establish who physically controlled a signing key or re-prove every externally supplied business fact contained in the record.

Can establish, as applicable

Artifact structure and version
Artifact integrity
Signature validation against the supplied trust root
Chain consistency
Recorded lifecycle and provenance facts supported by the artifact

Does not establish by itself

That every possible path was enforcing
That the path set was complete
An Effect without Effect evidence
An Outcome without Outcome evidence
Safety or compliance
The absence of records omitted before signing

Tamper evidence

Append-only, signed and hash-chained. Tamper-evident, not tamper-resistant.

Verification can detect certain changes to recorded evidence. It does not prevent someone with sufficient access from deleting files or prove that an event omitted before signing occurred.

No-service verification

Evidence can be checked independently of an Aarmos service using the browser verifier or public verifier library, within their supported formats. The evaluation CLI and standalone binary are not publicly distributed.

Verify · Reproduce · Execute again

Three different operations.

Verify checks whether supplied evidence is structurally valid and correctly signed. Reproduce re-derives a recorded governance evaluation only where its defined inputs and qualified contract are available. Execute again creates a new consequence Attempt that requires its own governance.

Verify supplied evidence in the in-browser verifier or with the open @avar-standard/verify library on public npm. Verification does not execute the consequence.

Govern · Run · Prove