Pattern Proposal: State-Machine Governance Guardrail

Summary

Constrains autonomous agent actions through a deterministic state machine transition registry.

Candidate Pattern

• ID: state-machine-governance-guardrail
• 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) - Maintains allowed transitions and executes governed operations
• src/cas_runner/governance/models.py (GovernanceAction, GovernanceException) - Defines action payload and failure types

Scope Assessment

• Evidence Strength: high
• Confidence: high
• Applies to: ideas-to-life-cas

Rationale

• Intent: Ensure that agent-proposed actions follow strict architectural lifecycle rules without uncontrolled side effects.
• Context: Executing governance actions and state transitions generated by agents or pipelines.
• Force: Agents may propose invalid transitions or bypass approval phases
• Force: Rules must be strictly enforced regardless of LLM reasoning variations

Traceability

Artifact source: proposed-patterns