Repo-native agentic SDLC governance

Governed SDLC for autonomous agents.

Creator Engine binds every agent-authored mutation to identity, mutation class, evidence, and a named ratifier — so agent work is reviewable, ratifiable, and shippable, straight from git clone.

Daemonless local ce runtime Operator-ratified gates Evidence in your repo
9+1
Baseline mutation classes, privileged floor
25
State SDLC machine, 24 governed transitions
13
ce command groups in the current runtime surface
0
Daemons & web servers — runs on demand, then exits

v3.0 MVP-complete is proven by the live open→review→merge spike; v3.1 pilot-ready is the active arc. The packaged runtime is still a repository-checkout 0.1.0 pre-release. Apache-2.0.

The problem

Agent work is auditable only by trust. That doesn't scale.

Today, agents claim completion, humans accept the claim, and "go ahead" in chat becomes de facto merge authority. There is no durable record joining the claim to identity, evidence, and an explicit ratifier. As agent throughput grows, ungoverned mutations become indistinguishable from confabulated progress.

The promise

Fix the contract before the agent acts. Record it after.

Creator Engine treats this as a contract problem, not a tooling problem. Identity, mutation class, permitted actions, verification evidence, and the named ratifier are fixed before an agent acts — and recorded as durable, repo-visible artifacts after. Agents are productive proposers; humans remain the ratifiers.

How it works

Four governed moves, one repo-visible trail.

Each agent invocation is bounded by an Assignment Envelope and lands evidence the next reviewer — or an auditor months later — can replay from the repository alone.

01

Scope

An Assignment Envelope fixes identity, mutation class, and permitted actions for a single agent invocation — before any work begins.

02

Propose

Agents implement inside an isolated, rootless worker. Every side effect is appended to a hash-chained ledger you can verify.

03

Verify

ce check and fan-in assemble spec, tests, and review into a read-only evidence packet. CI and review inform — they never ratify.

04

Ratify

Privileged gates route to the Operator — the apex human authority. Deploys, governance changes, and settings flips stay human-ratified.

Capabilities

A control plane for agentic development.

Primitives that make autonomy safe to scale — visible surfaces, isolated workers, and repo-local evidence, with the privileged floor reserved for humans.

Spec-driven by default

Wraps Spec Kit with sidecar YAML — byte-identical compatibility. Every change traces to a spec, plan, and tasks triple.

Identity-aware authority

An authority matrix and ratifier taxonomy bind each mutation to who may propose it and who alone may ratify it.

Mutation-class governed

Nine baseline classes plus a privileged floor. Reserved-action vocabulary makes high-risk operations explicit, not implicit.

Evidence-verified

Attestation, ratification, and redaction records plus validator output reconstruct every mutation from git clone alone.

Visible Controller seat

ce launch opens a visible tmux Controller seat and governed lanes — orchestration you can watch, not a black box.

Isolated workers

Rootless Podman worker isolation with a credential broker. Parallel agent lanes, one driver per worktree, governed conflict taxonomy.

The ce runtime

Daemonless. Repo-native. Runs on demand, then exits.

A local command-line runtime over your repository's .hermes/ state and tracked substrate. No daemon, no web server. Offline, uv-first install against a checked-in wheelhouse.

install + first run
# 1 — clone the public repository
git clone https://github.com/creator-engine/creator-engine.git
cd creator-engine
# 2 — install from the checked-in cp314 wheelhouse
uv venv --python 3.14
UV_PYTHON_DOWNLOADS=never uv pip install --no-index \
--find-links validators/wheelhouse creator-engine-validator
# 3 — initialize local kernel state
.venv/bin/ce init
.hermes/ kernel initialized
# 4 — preflight + conformance
.venv/bin/ce doctor && .venv/bin/ce check
environment governed · conformance passed
# 5 — open the visible Controller seat
.venv/bin/ce launch

The current command surface — thirteen groups, no hidden authority:

ce checkRun conformance checks
ce doctorGoverned-environment preflight
ce initInitialize .hermes/ state
ce launchVisible Controller seat
ce laneGoverned visible lanes
ce workerRootless Podman isolation
ce ledgerAppend-only hash chain
ce faninRead-only evidence packet
ce queueIntegration dry-run preview
ce eventLocal CE-event chains
ce pclCoordination ledgers
ce connectorConnector plans and bounded submits
ce hudSeam alias for ce launch

ce fanin, ce queue, and connector output inform decisions; they do not ratify privileged action. The one-line uvx installer is post-v1 — today's public install is a repository checkout.

Governance primitives

The privileged floor stays human.

Review, CI, fan-in, and harness output inform the Operator — but never ratify on the Operator's behalf. These primitives hold regardless of release stage.

Operator ratification

The apex human authority ratifies every privileged gate: deploys, governance amendments, identity/security changes, repo settings, branch protection, visibility flips.

Assignment Envelope

Bounds exactly what an agent may do in a single invocation — identity, mutation class, and permitted actions, fixed up front.

Side-Effect Ledger

An append-only hash chain of effects. ce ledger verify proves the chain is intact — tamper-evident by construction.

Verifies, never ratifies

CI is a required check that informs ratification. The self-claim rejection invariant means an agent's own "done" never counts as authority.

Redaction gate

A governed policy for what may be recorded and what must be withheld, with redaction records that keep the audit trail honest.

Conflict taxonomy

Turns "the agents disagree" into a governed resolution path — one driver per worktree, with parallel pairs and named escalation.

Why it matters

Ad-hoc agent coding vs. a governed substrate.

The difference isn't speed — it's whether you can still trust the result months later.

Ungoverned agent coding

  • "Done" is a chat claim with no durable record.
  • "Go ahead" becomes de facto merge authority.
  • No binding between a change, its evidence, and a ratifier.
  • Side effects are invisible and unverifiable.
  • Privileged operations happen wherever the agent reaches.
  • Governance survives only as human vigilance — until it doesn't.

Creator Engine

  • Every mutation is a repo-visible artifact, replayable from clone.
  • Ratification is explicit, named, and Operator-only for privileged classes.
  • Identity, mutation class, evidence, and ratifier are bound together.
  • Side effects land on a verifiable hash-chained ledger.
  • Privileged operations route to a single human gate.
  • Governance is a contract the repository enforces.
Roadmap & seams

Honest about where the build is.

We name release stages plainly. v3.0 is MVP-complete; v3.1 pilot-ready is in progress; the public runtime package remains a 0.1.0 repository-checkout pre-release.

Proven · v3.0

MVP-complete inner loop

The live spike proved the governed loop end-to-end: one real PR opened, independently reviewed, and squash-merged by a distinct merge identity, with schema-valid evidence on the hash chain.

In progress · v3.1

Pilot-ready stack

G-3.9 cleanup is next, followed by the agent-interaction contract, tokenomics gate, coordination layer, and G-7 product surface with the two-mode installer.

Pre-release · 0.1.0

Repository-checkout runtime

The public package is still installed from the repository's checked-in wheelhouse. No hosted service, no daemon, and no uvx one-liner yet; the Operator-only privileged floor is preserved.

Make agent work shippable

Governed autonomy, straight from git clone.

Read the substrate, run the validator, and see every mutation bound to identity, evidence, and a named ratifier. Adopt it by cloning a repository — not by standing up infrastructure.