Pattern Proposal: Registry-Guarded Governance State Machine
Summary
Constrains autonomous actions and artifact state progressions through an explicit transition registry that validates preconditions before allowing state shifts.
Candidate Pattern
- ID:
registry-guarded-governance-state-machine - Classification: governance
- Maturity: established
- Type: implemented
Observed Signals
No specific signals listed.
Evidence
Supporting Evidence
- src/cas_runner/governance/governance_action_engine.py (TransitionRegistry, GovernanceActionEngine) - Registry and execution engine enforcing state lifecycle transitions
- src/cas_runner/governance/models.py (GovernanceAction, GovernanceException) - Action descriptors and domain exception types for illegal actions
Scope Assessment
- Evidence Strength: high
- Confidence: high
- Applies to: ideas-to-life-cas
Rationale
- Intent: Prevent LLM or autonomous workers from promoting or transitioning architectural artifacts into invalid states.
- Context: Architectural artifacts (patterns, rules, decisions) must adhere to defined lifecycles (e.g. exploring -> validating -> stable) and cannot skip governance checks.
- Force: Autonomous agents must execute actions while preventing unauthorized or invalid state transitions.
- Force: Traceability of state transitions must be retained for audits.
Traceability
Artifact source: proposed-patterns