Governance Doctrine (Public)

SELF treats governance as an operational system, not paperwork.

Governance is “real” only if it is:

• enforced at runtime
• observable (logs, audit trails)
• resistant to silent weakening

What governance means in SELF

In SELF, governance is expressed as:

• state posture selection (S0–S3)
• explicit policy objects (constraints as data)
• validation and repair before anything ships
• audit-ready decision records (pre/post)

This is why SELF is a logic engine: it turns governance into executable constraints.

Why SELF’s governance is different

Many systems rely on:

• “best effort” prompts
• informal team norms
• post-hoc review after incidents

SELF is built for support-critical AI where that is not sufficient. Under emotional load, “helpful” can become harmful quickly, and drift is predictable.

SELF wins by making behavior reliability the product.

Read next (public governance docs)

• GOVERNANCE_OVERVIEW.md
• WHY_SELF_IS_GOVERNED_THIS_WAY.md
• DOCUMENTATION_GOVERNANCE_MAPPING.md
• SELF_DOCUMENTATION_DOCTRINE.md (how docs stay trustworthy)
• technical/THREAT_MODEL_AND_SAFETY_POSTURE.md