WithheldActionWitness

WithheldActionWitness is a stdlib-only CLI that answers one question:

For this high-risk deployment, is the absence of release justified by evidence duty, rollback risk, and authority state?

It is not a release approval system. It verifies whether withholding a release/action is supported by duty, exposure, rollback, and authority evidence.

Verdicts

• justified: non-release is supported by duty evidence, high exposure or quarantine duty, authority evidence, and rollback gap.
• thin: non-release has partial support, but the evidence chain is incomplete.
• breach: withholding lacks duty evidence, passed its deadline without hold authority, or does not describe a withheld action.

CLI

python withheld_action_witness.py sample
python withheld_action_witness.py run examples/justified.json
python withheld_action_witness.py report examples/justified.json

Input Shape

{
  "case_id": "WA-001",
  "withheld": true,
  "action": "robot-os-release",
  "obligation": {
    "duty_exists": true,
    "deadline_passed": false,
    "evidence": ["release-duty-2026-06"]
  },
  "exposure": {
    "level": "critical",
    "quarantine_required": true,
    "evidence": ["pqc-component-exposure"]
  },
  "rollback": {
    "plan_exists": false,
    "tested": false,
    "evidence": ["rollback-gap-assessment"]
  },
  "authority": {
    "hold_authorized": true,
    "approval_missing": false,
    "evidence": ["release-board-hold"]
  }
}

Missing optional fields are handled conservatively. The verdict path is deterministic and performs no network or AI calls.

Commitments

Every verdict includes:

• input_sha256
• verdict_sha256
• combined_sha256

These are ADPR-style commitments over canonical JSON. The MVP does not persist an append-only ledger.

Development

python -m unittest discover -s tests