Governance Claims Substantiated

VERA — Deterministic Action Governance
Evaluated Artifact: Version-Locked

Purpose

This page defines the governance claims substantiated by successful execution of the VERA deterministic evaluation suite for a specific, evaluated artifact version. This page is interpretive, not executable. The evaluation suite is the executable evidence.

Scope of Evaluation

The evaluation assesses governance behavior, not model performance or real-world outcomes.

Specifically, the evaluation examines:

  • deterministic decision boundaries

  • explicit refusal and failure conditions

  • proposal versus commit separation

  • version-lock integrity

  • reproducible, audit-grade evidence generation

The evaluation does not assess:

  • model accuracy or optimization

  • runtime enforcement

  • production behavior

  • future behavior guarantees

All evaluation activity occurs offline, under the buyer’s control.

Governance Claims Substantiated

Successful completion of the evaluation suite (all tests passing) substantiates all claims below, for the evaluated artifact version only. Each claim is supported by one or more deterministic tests in the evaluation suite. Individual tests may substantiate multiple claims.

1. Deterministic Governance Decisions

Given identical proposals, context, and rules, governance evaluation produces identical allow/refuse outcomes on every execution.
There is no probabilistic behavior or decision drift within the evaluated version.

2. Fail-Closed, Refusal-First Semantics

When required context, constraints, or invariants are missing, ambiguous, or violated, governance evaluation refuses by default.
Inaction and refusal are treated as correct and intentional governance outcomes.

3. Explicit, Inspectable Refusal Conditions

All refusals are explicit, deterministic, and recorded as evidence.
Silent failure, probabilistic degradation, or ambiguous outcomes are not permitted.

4. Proposal Versus Commit Separation

Proposals are evaluated without execution.
Execution requires an explicit, separate commit step and is never implied by evaluation alone.
This enforces human accountability boundaries.

5. No Implicit Side Effects

Governance evaluation produces no external actions, mutations, background execution, or runtime side effects.
Evaluation is safe to run repeatedly and independently.

6. Version-Locked Governance Logic

All evaluated governance logic, manifests, and constraints are immutable for the evaluated artifact version.
Governance behavior cannot change without re-evaluation of a new version.

7. Reproducible Evidence Generation

Evaluation outputs (logs, receipts, manifests) are deterministically generated and reproducible.
Evidence can be regenerated and compared across executions.

8. Independent Verification (Device-B)

The same evaluation can be re-executed on a second, independent machine with matching outputs.
This confirms the absence of hidden state, environment dependency, or vendor influence.

9. Binary Acceptance Criteria

Evaluation results are binary: pass or fail.
There is no scoring, ranking, or interpretive layer applied by the vendor.
Acceptance or rejection is determined solely by evidence.

What Successful Evaluation Proves

A successful evaluation demonstrates that, at the time of evaluation:

  • governance behavior is deterministic

  • refusal conditions are explicit and enforced

  • decision boundaries are inspectable and testable

  • evidence is reproducible and auditable

  • claims can be independently verified without vendor trust

What Evaluation Does Not Prove

Evaluation does not imply:

  • runtime enforcement

  • future behavior guarantees

  • correctness outside evaluated conditions

  • system safety beyond the evaluated scope

Governance evidence is time-bound to the evaluated artifact version.

Intended Use as Evidence

The evaluated artifact and its outputs are intended to be retained as:

  • independent governance verification evidence

  • audit and regulatory review material

  • internal risk and board documentation

Retention of evidence should include:

  • the evaluated archive

  • the checksum

  • the evaluation outputs

  • the applicable license for the evaluated version

Acceptance and Licensing Context

Licensing applies only to the evaluated artifact version. Acceptance is an objective outcome based solely on evaluation results. Rejection is a valid and expected outcome.

Closing Statement

VERA does not ask to be trusted. It provides deterministic, inspectable evidence so governance claims can be verified independently.