Policies & Ledger

Policies govern how the factory operates: who must approve work, which checks apply and what evidence is required before work can progress. The ledger preserves the decisions and their supporting evidence, so you can understand why a result occurred and identify what needs to change.

Policies

Policies express the rules the factory applies as work runs.

• Approvals define reviewer eligibility and the responses required to approve an artifact.
• Checks define which repository checks apply and the evidence they must produce.

Workflow gates use the resulting approvals and evidence to determine whether work can proceed. Factory Governance explains how these controls fit together.

Policy versions

Policies are versioned so their rules can improve without rewriting the basis of earlier decisions. A new version changes the rules for future work; activation determines when it takes effect.

The repository policy catalogue shows check-policy versions, their applicability, requirements and source references. It provides a read-only view of those rules and their history.

Governance ledger

The ledger records approval requests, responses and outcomes, ratified decisions and their replacements, and governed check reports. Entries retain the relevant policy versions, evidence and authority at the time of the event.

This history lets you trace an unexpected result back to its basis: which rule applied, what evidence was reported and who authorised the decision. Later revocations or replacements add to the history without changing the original record.

Policy improvement

Ledger evidence helps identify rules that need strengthening, simplifying or removing. For example, an approval that is consistently granted without changes may be worth reviewing alongside the quality of the resulting work. That pattern is evidence for an improvement candidate, rather than proof that review is unnecessary.

Alternative policy evaluation

The intended next step is to evaluate recorded cases against a candidate policy and compare which checks, approvals or progression decisions would change. That comparison would help establish whether a proposed improvement is justified before activation. It would assess decisions using the available historical evidence, rather than predict every consequence of a different workflow.

Alternative-policy replay is not yet exposed by the ledger. The current feature provides the recorded history and supporting evidence for investigation and proposal development.