AletheIA — Development Governance Pack v1

Objective

This document formalizes the first Governance Pack for AletheIA.

In plain language:

if the Decision Kernel is the “minimum engine”, the Governance Pack is the layer that defines:

• what is mandatory;
• what is forbidden;
• what needs review;
• what needs human approval.

What this pack is

This is the first official AletheIA governance pack for AI-assisted software development.

It exists to turn good practices into evaluable rules during:

• analysis;
• planning;
• execution;
• validation.

What this pack is not

• it is not the whole framework;
• it is not a prompt;
• it is not the Rule Interpreter;
• it is not a universal policy for every type of work.

It is a software-development-specific policy pack inside the broader AletheIA umbrella.

Relationship to token discipline

The Governance Pack says when work may or may not proceed.

The Token Policy complements it by defining:

• how much context should be loaded;
• when that context should be loaded;
• when context expansion is justified.

Recommended reading together:

• docs/token-policy.md
• docs/durable-decisions.md

Why this matters

Without explicit governance, AI can:

• expand scope without noticing;
• write without enough context;
• change contracts implicitly;
• skip validation;
• touch files outside the boundary.

The Governance Pack exists to reduce those risks.

Enforcement boundary

The Governance Pack describes rules and expectations.

Not every rule described here is already technically unavoidable.

To make that explicit, read it together with:

• docs/enforcement-boundaries.md

Normalized AletheIA vocabulary

To keep the framework more domain-agnostic, this pack uses more general terms:

What these terms mean

Source-of-Truth Artifact

The artifact that defines the expected behavior.

It can be a:

• SPEC;
• feature spec;
• task brief;
• architecture note;
• contract document.

Work Item

A Work Item is the official governed unit of work in AletheIA.

It is tracker-agnostic by design.

A GitHub issue may represent a Work Item in one project, but the framework does not depend on GitHub or any other specific tracker to define the concept.

A Work Item should keep an objective, an expected outcome, a governing context, and a local lifecycle state explicit enough to be reviewed and resumed.

For canonical vocabulary, see:

• docs/canonical-vocabulary.md

Authoritative Layer

The layer responsible for the final critical decision.

If a backend exists, it usually plays this role.

But AletheIA does not depend on the word “backend” to exist.

The important rule is:

critical validation must not live in a fragile or untrusted layer.

Execution Scope

The explicit boundary of a change.

It defines:

• what may be changed;
• what may not be changed;
• what type of operation is expected.

Principles reinforced by this pack

1. clarity over speed;
2. control over automation;
3. consistency over convenience;
4. analysis before writing;
5. contract before implementation;
6. validation before completion.

Governance areas covered

1. Pipeline

Ensures that work passes through:

• analysis;
• planning;
• execution;
• validation.

2. Scope Control

Ensures:

• one change per Work Item;
• explicit boundaries;
• prohibition of implicit expansion.

3. Context Awareness

Ensures:

• reading before writing;
• minimum analysis before code generation.

4. Contracts

Ensures:

• input/output definition;
• interface stability;
• blocking of implicit changes.

5. Security

Ensures:

• no secret exposure;
• critical validation in the authoritative layer;
• explicit confirmation for sensitive operations.

6. Validation

Ensures:

• post-execution validation;
• alignment with the source-of-truth artifact;
• regression protection.

7. Source-of-Truth Governance

Ensures:

• required updates when behavior changes;
• coherence between code and the reference artifact.

Possible actions