Reference
What a boundary authorization record actually contains.
Not the argument for why this matters, that's in Who, When, Whether. This is the structure itself: every field, why it exists, and what happens the moment one lapses.
The three questions
Who, when, and whether it still held
Every real authorization answers three questions. Who granted it. When they granted it. And whether their authority still held at the moment it mattered. Most governance products stop at the first two, because the third one is the only one that can catch you out later.
A boundary authorization record is a single, sealed answer to all three, for one specific decision to let an AI system do something. Below is exactly what it captures, field by field.
The record
Every field, and why it exists
decision
What was actually approved. Plain text, e.g. "Approved use of Vendor X's AI copywriting tool for marketing drafts." Not a category. The specific thing.
owner_name / owner_role
Who granted it, and in what capacity. A name without a role is an assertion. A name with a role is a fact someone can be held to.
decision_date
When authority was granted. Fixed at creation, sealed, not editable afterwards.
expires_at
The shelf life. Required, not optional: an authorization with no expiry is not a strong grant, it's one nobody was ever forced to think about ending.
expiry_conditions
The specific, observable conditions that void the grant early, written at the moment of signing, not added afterwards. "Vendor X appears on a regulator's enforcement list" is a condition. "If things go wrong" is not.
continuity_owner_name / continuity_owner_role
Distinct from the owner above. This is whoever holds the duty to renew the authorization or arrange a successor before it lapses. Added after a sharp public question: a lapse record used to fix only when a mandate went vacant, never who was accountable for it going vacant. This field closes that gap.
supersedes_id
If this record replaces an earlier one, because the role holder changed, this links to the record it replaces. The chain of custody for the mandate is provable, not left as separate, disconnected records.
options_considered / risks_accepted / evidence
What else was weighed, what risk was knowingly taken and how it was mitigated, and what evidence the decision actually rested on. The difference between a decision and a guess, on the record.
When it lapses
A gap in coverage is a fact, not an inference
Most systems check an expiry date lazily, on display, whenever someone happens to look. That means a real gap in coverage, a period where nobody actually held valid authority, is never itself a recorded fact. It's only something reconstructible later, if anyone thinks to look.
A daily check finds every record whose expiry has passed and seals the lapse itself as its own event, the moment it's detected, before any successor exists. And because the continuity owner is named on the original record, the sealed lapse event names them directly too: not just that the seat went empty, but who was on the hook for it going empty.
That sealed lapse event is timestamped by an independent authority and checkable by anyone, with no account, the same way every other claim on this site is.
Provable, not just written down
Sealed, timestamped, and publicly checkable
Every boundary authorization record is chained cryptographically to the ones before it, and sealed with an independent, third party timestamp. Editing, deleting, or backdating a record after the fact breaks the seal, and that break is detectable by anyone, not just us.
Tampering isn't made impossible. It's made detectable. Those are different claims, and only one of them is true of any system, including this one. See it demonstrated on the Witness Network page, or check any specific record yourself at redflagaipro.com/verify.
This is what Sentinel builds for every AI system you approve.
The evidence a regulator, insurer, or court asks for when something goes wrong, not a policy document asserting good intentions.
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