Governance Certificate

A governance certificate is a self-authenticating JSON artifact that proves the full chain from intent to auditable output for a factory pipeline run.

Structure

The certificate is structured as a top-level GovernanceCertificate object containing sub-records for the run's intent, build specification, stage artifacts, verification outcomes, and the cryptographic proof chain.

The certificate is content-addressed and signed. The certificateHash is the SHA-256 of the canonical JSON of the certificate (with the hash and signature fields zeroed). The certSignature is an Ed25519 signature over that canonical JSON.

Version 1.5.0

tenant-emit and tenant-tail are tightly coupled to a specific certificate format version.

The certificate version is strictly pinned to 1.5.0.

This version string is a fixed value that the verifier checks by strict equality. It is load-bearing: bumping the version would cause the verifier to reject the certificate.

Version 1.5.0 carries the additive corpusBinding field. Because this field is skipped in serialization when absent, an unbound certificate serializes identically to a pre-binding payload, meaning the version pin remains stable regardless of whether corpus binding is used.

Verifiable-but-unsealed

A tenant-emitted certificate carries no platform countersign.

The platformCountersign field exists in the schema (for serialization parity with the upstream platform) but is always omitted by tenant-emit. A tenant run occurs outside the platform's admission and grant flow, so there is no platform seal to apply.

This makes the certificate verifiable-but-unsealed. It is visibly unsealed, never silently equivalent to a platform-sealed certificate, and round-trips perfectly offline.