Provenact

Verifiable execution substrate for immutable skills.

About Provenact

Provenact verifies and executes immutable, attestable skills with strict capability controls, deterministic verification/execution contracts, and signed provenance. It is an execution substrate, not an agent framework: packaging, signing, verification, and policy-constrained runtime with auditable receipts.

What Provenact Is

Provenact provides:

• a format and trust model for immutable executable bundles
• cryptographic attestation of code, inputs, and declared capabilities
• a sandboxed runtime for deterministic, policy-constrained execution
• tooling to package, sign, verify, inspect, and run skills
• conformance vectors and receipt verification for auditability

Provenact is not an agent framework, workflow engine, or orchestration layer.

Core Principles

1. Immutability by default.
2. Explicit capabilities.
3. Verifiable provenance.
4. Deterministic execution.
5. Composability without trust collapse.

What Provenact Is Not

• Not an LLM/agent framework
• Not a scheduler or workflow orchestrator
• Not a general container runtime
• Not a blockchain

Repository Layout

provenact/
├─ spec/            # Normative specs (formats, policies, threat model)
├─ core/            # Verification, signing, policy libraries (Rust)
├─ runtime/         # Runtime execution/transcript docs
├─ cli/             # Developer tooling (pack, sign, verify, run)
├─ skills/          # Blessed stdlib skills and fixtures
├─ test-vectors/    # Conformance vectors
├─ docs/            # Architecture and release/readiness docs
├─ apps/            # Temporary app/control-plane scaffolds
└─ README.md

Runtime Architecture

Execution is intentionally split into narrow layers:

1. core/verifier

• strict parsing and deterministic verification primitives
• policy and capability evaluation
• canonical hashing and signature checks

2. cli/provenact-cli

• user-facing command orchestration (pack, sign, verify, run)
• preflight bundle validation and trust-anchor handling
• runtime invocation with resource limits

3. runtime/ docs + specs

• execution rules, transcript model, and threat boundaries

This separation keeps cryptographic checks reusable and keeps command UX logic out of the verifier core.

Status

v0.1.0 baseline released; current work is hardening and operational polish.

Stability notes:

• v0 bundle/manifest/policy/receipt schemas are normative and SemVer-governed.
• Fields and commands marked experimental are explicitly unstable.
• provenact-cli run requires --receipt; successful runs always emit a receipt.
• External timestamp authority is out of scope for v0 receipts.
• Reproducible builds are a roadmap objective; v0 does not yet publish CI build reproducibility proofs.

Compatibility policy is defined in spec/compatibility.md.

Security Model

Assumptions and non-goals are defined in spec/threat-model.md.

Runtime Profile (v0)

• Artifact format: WebAssembly module (.wasm) validated by Wasmtime.
• Host interface: Provenact host ABI (docs/runtime-host-abi.md).
• WASI imports are not part of the v0 normative runtime contract.

Conformance And Release

• Run full conformance: cargo conformance
• Run release gate locally: cargo release-v0-check
• Release checklist: RELEASE_V0_CHECKLIST.md
• Coverage matrix: docs/conformance-matrix.md
• Secure quickstart: docs/getting-started.md
• Observability contract: docs/observability.md
• Audit policy: audit.toml

Secure CLI Flow (Quickstart)

1. Pack: provenact-cli pack --bundle ./bundle --wasm ./skill.wasm --manifest ./manifest.json

2. Sign: provenact-cli sign --bundle ./bundle --signer alice.dev --secret-key ./alice.key

3. Pin trust anchor digest: KEYS_DIGEST="$(shasum -a 256 ./public-keys.json | awk '{print "sha256:"$1}')".

4. Verify: provenact-cli verify --bundle ./bundle --keys ./public-keys.json --keys-digest "$KEYS_DIGEST"

5. Run: provenact-cli run --bundle ./bundle --keys ./public-keys.json --keys-digest "$KEYS_DIGEST" --policy ./policy.json --input ./input.json --receipt ./receipt.json

Specification Notes

• AGENTS.md defines repository scope boundaries.
• SPEC.md is the top-level spec index.
• spec/ contains normative v0 format and policy documents.