passepartout/skills/org-skill-policy-enforcer.org

SKILL: Policy Enforcer

• Overview
  • Architectural Intent: The Implicit Bridge
• Implementation

Overview

The Policy Enforcer is the deterministic gate that ensures all probabilistic proposals adhere to the Core Invariants defined in the System Policy.

Architectural Intent: The Implicit Bridge

Unlike traditional software where a "Kernel" might have hardcoded rules, the OpenCortex harness is a "dumb" pipeline. This skill creates the bridge between human-readable rules and machine-enforced constraints through three mechanisms:

1. Topological Bootstrapping: By declaring a #+DEPENDS_ON: dependency on the Policy file's ID, we ensure the System Policy is always registered in the Lisp image's skill catalog before this enforcer attempts to guard it.
2. Priority Preemption: By setting :priority 1000, this skill registers itself as the very first check in the decide-gate. It effectively "pre-empts" all other skills, ensuring that no action (like a shell command or a file write) is even considered until it has cleared the alignment check.
3. Decoupled Enforcement: The harness does not "know" it is enforcing a policy. It simply executes the highest-priority deterministic functions provided by its skills. This allows the Autonomous to swap out policies or enforcers without ever touching the core harness code.

Implementation

(defskill :skill-policy-enforcer
  :priority 1000 ; Absolute highest priority
  :trigger (lambda (context) t) ; Always active as a fallback
  :probabilistic (lambda (context)
           \"You are the OpenCortex Policy Enforcer. Your goal is to ensure all actions empower the user through the Lisp Machine and adhere to the System Policy.\")
  :deterministic (lambda (action context)
              ;; Basic invariant check: Block actions that appear to violate autonomy
              (let ((payload (getf action :payload)))
                (if (and payload (search \"proprietary\" (format nil \"~s\" payload)))
                    (progn
                      (opencortex:harness-log \"DETERMINISTIC [Policy]: Autonomy violation suspected. Blocking action.\")
                      nil)
                    action))))