Cortex Platform

Spatiotemporal Authority & Semantic Verification Framework

Cortex is a spatiotemporal authority and semantic verification framework designed to enforce execution integrity, capability-negotiated sandboxing, and post-facto deterministic verification across autonomous software runtimes and AI agent architectures.

📖 System Architecture & Design Overview

Traditional security architectures rely on static user identity roles (POSIX permissions, IAM roles, cgroups) which fail under non-deterministic AI agent workloads and dynamic plugin executions:

• Ambient Authority Leakage: Agents executing inside shell environments inherit full ambient process permissions, allowing unmediated filesystem or network access.
• Subshell Script Bypasses: Malicious or miscalibrated plugins invoke shell scripts (.sh), subprocesses, or eval blocks to bypass application-level checks.
• Trace Non-Repudiation: Without cryptographic trace verification, auditing why an autonomous agent performed a destructive side-effect is impossible.

Cortex replaces ambient authority with a Hardware/Kernel-Enforced 4-Layer Security Boundary:

 ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │ 1. STATIC CAPABILITY NEGOTIATION & STCR MAPPING (Gate K / ADR-008)                          │
 │ Manifests declare required permissions before plugins access the kernel bus.                │
 └──────────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                                │ SignedIntent Payload (CBE Format)
                                                ▼
 ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │ 2. EXECUTION TOKEN INTENT PARITY & ACTUATION GATE (Gate H / P2)                             │
 │ Single-use ExecutionTokens bind tokens strictly to intent hashes: D3 == D2                  │
 └──────────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                                │ Governed Side-Effect Execution
                                                ▼
 ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │ 3. ROLLING CAUSAL WITNESS JOURNALING (Gate I / P3)                                          │
 │ Emits tamper-evident rolling hash commitments: W_{t+1} = SHA256(W_t || D_E || D_I)          │
 └──────────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                                │ Raw Evidence Traces (R, E)
                                                ▼
 ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │ 4. ZERO-DEPENDENCY INDEPENDENT UNTRUSTED VERIFIER (Gate J / P4)                               │
 │ Standalone CLI tools/cortex-verifier evaluates traces ➔ VALID (0), INVALID (1), INDETERMINATE │
 └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

🗺️ Repository Map & Documentation Architecture

For open-source contributors and systems architects, the codebase is structured logically across normative specifications, architecture records, polyglot engines, and verification suites:

Cortex Platform Architecture Map
├── docs/                                    # Master Technical & Specification Portal
│   ├── architecture/                        # Architectural Audits & Verification Matrices
│   │   ├── verification_closure_matrix.md   # Master Phase 13 Assurance Status Matrix
│   │   ├── gate_g_complete_mediation_inventory.md # Complete Mediation Path Analysis
│   │   └── threat_model.md                  # Threat Vectors & Mitigation Catalog
│   ├── spec/                                # Normative Protocol & Security Specifications
│   │   ├── gate_g_remediation_specification.md # Worker Sandbox & Narrow IPC Architecture
│   │   ├── gate_h_execution_token_specification.md # ExecutionToken & Intent Parity Spec (P2)
│   │   ├── gate_i_causal_witness_specification.md  # Rolling Witness Chain Specification (P3)
│   │   ├── gate_j_independent_verifier_specification.md # Untrusted Verifier Engine Spec (P4)
│   │   └── v03_layer2_streaming_spec.md     # Layer 2 Streaming Protocol Framing
│   └── adrs/                                # Architectural Decision Records
│       └── ADR-008-identity-specification-supersession.md # Identity Supersession (UUIDv5/v7)
│
├── tools/                                   # Standalone Tooling & Verification Engines
│   └── cortex_verifier.py                   # Zero-dependency Independent Verifier CLI (Gate J)
│
├── tests/conformance/                       # Conformance & Adversarial Certification Suite
│   ├── run_certification.py                 # Master 74-Check Conformance Test Runner
│   ├── test_gate_h_adversarial.py           # Gate H Parity & Replay Protection Tests (21/21)
│   ├── test_gate_i_causal_witness.py        # Gate I Tamper-Evident Witness Chain Tests (7/7)
│   └── test_gate_j_independent_verifier.py # Gate J Verifier Engine Adversarial Tests (12/12)
│
├── cortex/                                  # Python Control Plane & Reference Runtime
├── cortex-emulator/                         # Rust STCR Hardware State Machine Emulator
├── cortex-go/                               # Go Layer 2 High-Concurrency Transport Adapter
└── rtl/                                     # SystemVerilog STCR Hardware Pipeline

🛡️ The Safety Invariants Matrix ($P1$–$P4$)

⚡ Contributor Quickstart & Test Commands

1. Prerequisites & Environment Setup

Clone the repository and install dependencies via uv or standard Python 3.10+:

git clone https://github.com/Iradukunda-Fils/Cortex.git
cd Cortex
uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -e .

2. Run Static Analysis & Type Checking

Ensure 0 type errors across the codebase:

pyright

3. Run Master Certification Pipeline

Execute the full 74-check conformance suite covering golden corpus vectors, Coq/Rust/RTL cycle assertions, Gate H parity, Gate I witness, and Gate J verification:

python3 tests/conformance/run_certification.py

4. Run Independent Verifier Engine CLI

Verify raw untrusted evidence bundles out-of-band without importing runtime modules:

python3 tools/cortex_verifier.py tests/conformance/fixtures/evidence_bundle_valid.json
# Output: VERDICT: VALID (0) - EVIDENCE_VERIFIED_VALID

💻 Developer Code Example: End-to-End Governed Execution

Here is how an application mints an intent, acquires an ExecutionToken, and enforces $D_3 \equiv D_2$ parity:

import hashlib
from cortex.cbe import encode_cbe

# 1. Define SignedIntent
intent_payload = {
    "body": {
        "intent_type": "STORAGE_WRITE",
        "target_resource": "/data/export.csv",
        "payload": {"bytes": 1024},
        "timestamp_ns": 1776274200000000000
    },
    "authority_pubkey": "PUBKEY_NODE_01",
    "signature": "a3f890b..."
}

# 2. Mint ExecutionToken (D2 = SHA256(CBE(SignedIntent)))
signed_intent_cbe = encode_cbe(intent_payload)
intent_hash_d2 = hashlib.sha256(signed_intent_cbe).hexdigest()
token = {"intent_hash": intent_hash_d2, "epoch": 1, "nonce": "abc123nonce"}

# 3. Actuation Boundary Assertion (D3 == D2)
d3_hash = hashlib.sha256(encode_cbe(intent_payload)).hexdigest()
if d3_hash != token["intent_hash"]:
    raise PermissionError(f"TRAP_INTENT_PARITY_MISMATCH: {d3_hash} != {token['intent_hash']}")

print("✅ Governed Side-Effect Actuated Successfully!")

📄 License & Governance

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE for details.