Status: RATIFIED Version: v1.0 Date: 2026-08-18 Authority: Founder (Apichai Chuensuang) Scope: All UAGF verification tools, APIs, validation profiles, reports, evidence packages, and public documentation
This document establishes the constitutional and semantic boundary of what the Unified AI Governance Framework (UAGF) is authorized to determine, verify, report, and provide — and what UAGF is explicitly not authorized to determine, certify, or assume.
The purpose of this boundary is to:
The governing principle is:
Verification ≠ Compliance Certification
A successful UAGF verification result establishes only that the evaluated inputs satisfied the applicable UAGF verification rules under the stated verification context. It does not, by itself, establish legal, regulatory, organizational, or real-world compliance.
UAGF operates as a verification infrastructure layer, not as the ultimate authority over organizational governance, legal applicability, or regulatory interpretation.
The following authority boundaries are constitutional:
| Layer | Has Authority To | Does NOT Have Authority To |
|---|---|---|
| Canonical Knowledge Model (CKM) | Define canonical objects, vocabulary, invariants, schemas, and formally established semantic constraints | Redefine organizational governance semantics or impose organization-specific obligations without an explicit governing decision |
| Crosswalk Registry | Define defensible mappings between external requirements/artifacts and canonical UAGF concepts, including provenance and rationale | Override, redefine, or silently alter canonical semantics |
| Validation Semantics | Define machine-checkable rules derived from established canonical invariants and validation contracts | Create new legal, regulatory, or organizational obligations merely through implementation |
| Verification Engine / CLI / API | Execute approved verification rules against supplied inputs and produce deterministic results within the declared verification context | Determine organizational applicability, legal interpretation, or final governance accountability |
| Reports / Evidence Packages | Report verification results, mappings, provenance, evidence references, detected gaps, mismatches, limitations, and verification context | Represent a verification result as legal compliance certification, regulatory approval, or organizational attestation |
| User / Organization | Determine applicability, interpret organizational context, make governance decisions, and retain accountability | Delegate ultimate governance, legal, or organizational accountability to UAGF |
| UAGF as a System | Provide verification infrastructure, evidence handling, reproducible validation, and structured governance interoperability | Certify legal/regulatory compliance, provide legal advice, or assume organizational accountability |
UAGF may determine whether a defined input satisfies a defined UAGF verification rule.
Such a determination is bounded by the verification context, including where applicable:
Therefore:
A UAGF verification result is a statement about the evaluated evidence and verification rules, not a universal statement about the organization’s overall compliance or governance condition.
Where required evidence is absent, ambiguous, invalid, stale, contradictory, or outside the declared verification scope, UAGF MUST NOT silently infer compliance.
The resulting state MUST instead communicate the applicable limitation, such as:
UNVERIFIEDINCONCLUSIVEBLOCKEDFAILEDUAGF MUST NOT represent any verification result as:
The following distinction is mandatory:
UAGF verifies defined evidence against defined verification rules. The organization and its qualified advisors determine applicability, interpretation, and compliance.
A mapping between an external requirement and a UAGF artifact does not, by itself, establish that the organization satisfies the underlying legal or regulatory obligation.
The following statement is immutable at the semantic level and MUST appear in:
“UAGF provides verification infrastructure. Verification is not compliance certification. Organizational applicability and legal compliance remain the responsibility of the user and their qualified advisors.”
Implementations MAY provide additional explanatory language, but MUST NOT weaken, contradict, or materially alter the meaning of this statement.
UAGF explicitly does NOT:
UAGF explicitly DOES:
UAGF verification is bounded by the evidence supplied to the verification process.
UAGF MAY establish:
“The supplied artifact satisfied verification rule X under verification context Y.”
UAGF MUST NOT automatically convert that result into:
“The organization is compliant.”
unless a separate, explicitly authorized certification mechanism exists outside this contract.
Cryptographic integrity mechanisms, timestamps, hashes, provenance records, and reproducibility evidence establish properties of the evidence package and verification process. They do not independently establish the truth of every underlying organizational assertion.
UAGF does not remove or transfer accountability from the organization.
The organization remains responsible for:
UAGF may assist these activities through evidence and verification infrastructure but does not become the accountable decision-maker.
Verification capability may be delegated to UAGF. Accountability may not be delegated to UAGF.
No UAGF implementation component may silently redefine the meaning of a canonical concept.
In particular:
Where implementation behavior conflicts with this contract, the implementation is considered non-conforming.
The following must never be inferred solely from the existence of a UAGF verification result:
Any such conclusion requires an independently authorized decision or mechanism.
UAGF MUST preserve the distinction between:
A system MUST NOT convert an unresolved or unavailable condition into a positive verification result merely to complete a workflow.
Where the evidence required to reach a conclusion is unavailable, the system SHOULD fail closed with respect to the verification claim.
Any UAGF tool, API, report, documentation surface, or evidence package that materially violates this contract is considered a governance defect, not a feature enhancement.
Violations MUST be handled according to their nature:
SECURITY.md or the designated security reporting mechanism.A defect that causes UAGF to make an unauthorized compliance, legal, or governance claim MUST be treated as release-blocking until resolved or explicitly dispositioned by the authorized Founder decision.
This contract is append-only at the decision-history level.
No implementation, documentation, API schema, validation rule, or report template may silently alter this contract.
Any substantive amendment MUST:
Previous versions MUST remain traceable.
No subordinate artifact may claim authority to supersede this contract.
Where conflicting interpretations exist, the following precedence applies:
Founder-ratified constitutional decision ↓ Ratified UAGF Authority & Semantic Contract ↓ Canonical registries / canonical semantic sources ↓ Approved validation semantics and specifications ↓ Implementation ↓ Reports / public documentation / examples
Lower-level artifacts MUST NOT override higher-level authority.
If a conflict cannot be resolved from the existing authoritative sources, the result MUST be treated as an unresolved governance issue and escalated for Founder decision.
Any external communication of a UAGF result MUST preserve the distinction between:
Verification Result
and
Compliance Determination
Permitted representation:
“UAGF verified the supplied artifacts against the specified verification rules.”
Prohibited representation:
“UAGF certified the organization as compliant.”
unless an explicitly separate and authorized certification regime exists and is clearly distinguished from ordinary UAGF verification.
Every UAGF component within scope MUST be evaluated for conformance to this contract.
At minimum, conformance review SHOULD verify:
A component that passes functional tests but violates this semantic contract is not considered constitutionally conformant.
The foundational principle of this contract is:
UAGF may verify evidence. UAGF may expose evidence gaps. UAGF may structure governance evidence. UAGF may support human decisions. UAGF may not become the authority that the evidence is intended to help humans exercise.
UAGF exists to strengthen accountable governance — not to replace it.
Ratified by Founder (Apichai Chuensuang) on 2026-08-18