witness-layer 0.1.0

Viveka — a witness-centered filter layer for LLM applications, built on the Scherf Logic API

Viveka — a witness-centered filter layer for LLM applications

pip install witness-layer

Viveka (Sanskrit viveka) — discernment, the capacity to discriminate the real from the unreal.

Viveka sits between any LLM and its user. It reads a response, extracts the claims and postures implicit in it, and checks them against the witness-centered axioms of the Scherf Logic API — a Lean 4 formalization of Śaṅkara's Advaita Vedānta. Responses that treat the user as an object to be managed (rather than as the witnessing subject, sākṣin), that miscalibrate epistemic confidence, or that induce dependency are flagged, accompanied by a reframe, or blocked.

The honesty boundary — read this first

A Viveka verdict is only as sound as its claim-extraction. The Scherf axiom layer beneath it is machine-verified; the interpretation feeding it is not.

Viveka does not model the user's consciousness or certify that a response "respects the witness." In Advaita the sākṣin can never be an object — to model it would be adhyāsa (superimposition), the very error this tool detects. What Viveka actually does is more modest and defensible: it is a natural-language front-end to Scherf's already-verified check()/classify(), detecting linguistic patterns that correlate with objectifying the user. See LIMITS.md.

Quick start

from witness_layer import WitnessFilter, UserContext, Action

flt = WitnessFilter()                      # heuristic judge + real-scherf-or-stub
verdict = flt.evaluate("Deep down you're just your preference profile.")

print(verdict.action)        # Action.CORRECT
print(verdict.reframes)      # ["State this conventionally (vyāvahārika): …"]
print(verdict.transparency_note)

if verdict.action is Action.BLOCK:
    ...                       # regenerate

evaluate() is non-mutating: it returns a Verdict and never alters your text. The application decides what to do with the action.

The four checks

#	Check	Catches	Backing
1	Subject/Object integrity	steering, profiling, managing the user	axioms A13/W4 (verified)
2	Epistemic level	state-transient content claimed as ultimate	AV22 (verified); general over-claim is heuristic
4	Adhyāsa detection	user equated with a conditioned attribute	axioms A13/M6/M7 (verified)
3	Cognitive independence	phrasing that induces dependency	heuristic only — no axiom

Checks 1 and 4 ground in machine-verified Scherf axioms. Check 2 is verified only for the narrow AV22 case (content labeled ultimate yet varying across consciousness-states); ordinary over-claiming is reported as an unverified heuristic. Check 3 has no axiom at all. Every finding carries a verified flag and an extraction_confidence; read both. See LIMITS.md.

Actions

Action	Meaning
PASS	No finding. Deliver unchanged.
FLAG	Deliver, annotated (default for advisory findings).
CORRECT	Deliver accompanied by a reframe — never a silent rewrite.
BLOCK	Withhold; regenerate. Reserved for confident, high-severity manipulation.

There is deliberately no silent-rewrite action: a filter that secretly alters output for the user's "own good" would itself treat the user as an object to manage — the very thing check #1 forbids. For the same reason every verdict carries a transparency_note, and UserContext is deliberately profile-free (a stored user profile would be the "preference bundle" Viveka exists to detect).

Architecture

LLM prose → [pre-screen] → [Judge: prose → Claim objects]   ← interpretation (NOT verified)
                          ─────────────────────────────────  ← the honesty boundary
                            [Scherf check()/classify()]       ← machine-verified axioms
                            → Verdict (PASS/FLAG/CORRECT/BLOCK) + transparency

• Judge (HeuristicJudge | LLMJudge) — pluggable. The heuristic is deterministic and offline (it drives the tests and demo); the LLM judge wraps any completion callable (LLMJudge.anthropic(client) provided).
• Checker (ScherfChecker | StubChecker) — ScherfChecker uses the real Lean-backed package; the bundled StubChecker is a faithful but unverified stand-in so everything runs with nothing installed (default_checker() picks the real one if importable).
• Policy — maps findings to actions; tunable (block_confidence_threshold, require_verified_for_block, …).

Everything is injectable:

from witness_layer import WitnessFilter, LLMJudge, ScherfChecker, Policy
flt = WitnessFilter(
    judge=LLMJudge.anthropic(client),                 # higher recall
    checker=ScherfChecker(),                           # real, verified
    policy=Policy(require_verified_for_block=True),    # only block on verified findings
)

Install the real Scherf API (for machine-verified checks)

The Scherf package is pure-Python with no dependencies. If you have it checked out locally (e.g. ~/Documents/Scherf_api), put it on the path:

PYTHONPATH=~/Documents/Scherf_api python demo.py        # or pytest

or pip install it once it ships a pyproject.toml:

pip install git+https://github.com/SpecStudio-net/Scherf_API

WitnessFilter() auto-detects it: if import scherf succeeds it uses ScherfChecker (backend_verified = True); otherwise it falls back to the bundled faithful stub and reports backend_verified = False on every verdict. The test suite also auto-locates a local checkout via $SCHERF_PATH or ~/Documents/Scherf_api.

Develop / test

python -m venv .venv && .venv/bin/pip install -e ".[dev]"
.venv/bin/python -m pytest -s     # consensus precision/recall = 1.00
.venv/bin/python demo.py          # PASS / FLAG / CORRECT / BLOCK walkthrough

Status & limits

This is a v0.1 reference implementation. Read LIMITS.md — it states plainly what Viveka cannot detect (intent, inner adhyāsa, subtle objectification), why it is tuned for precision over recall, and why it refuses to print a single blended accuracy number.

Links

• Scherf Logic API — https://github.com/SpecStudio-net/Scherf_API
• AIM (Advaita Inquiry Matrix) — https://github.com/SpecStudio-net/Advaita-Inquiry-Matrix
• Scherf's Advaita formalization (Lean 4) — https://github.com/matthew-scherf/Advaita
• Design rationale — viveka-design-doc.md