{"$schema":"https://f-act.org/standard/spec.schema.json","standard":{"name":"The Framework for Agent Conformance & Trust","shortName":"F-ACT","version":"1.0","edition":"Priority Edition","category":"Agent Sovereignty","published":"2026-08-19","canonicalUrl":"https://f-act.org/standard","steward":"Open Conformance Foundation (neutral steward, being established); published by Society OS Pty Ltd as current owner","framework":{"acronym":"GUARD","expansion":"Grant · Usage · Audit · Revocation · Data"},"tagline":"An open, verifiable standard for governing autonomous AI agents — the five questions every agent must answer (GUARD: Grant, Usage, Audit, Revocation, Data), the GUARD levels that grade the answers (No GUARD → GUARD 1 → GUARD 2 → GUARD 3), and the one principle that makes them mean anything: govern before execution."},"license":{"spec":{"id":"CC-BY-4.0","name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","attribution":"\"The Framework for Agent Conformance & Trust (F-ACT) 1.0\" by Society OS, licensed under CC BY 4.0."},"patents":{"note":"The core claims of the specification are separately covered by an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide patent non-assertion pledge. Copyright (the text) and patents (the claims) are two distinct rights, both settled in the adopter’s favour.","url":"https://openconformance.org/occ/pledge"}},"definingPrinciple":{"title":"Govern before execution — not after.","statement":"A standard for agent governance must require that policy is enforced at the moment of action — checked before an agent acts, and able to stop the action if the answer is no. Watching an agent and raising an alert after the fact is not governance; it is a record of what already went wrong. F-ACT is built on prevention: the answer to “is this allowed?” is decided before the consequence exists, not explained after it."},"dimensions":[{"id":"grant","number":1,"name":"Grant","question":"Who granted this agent its authority, and can that grant be traced to an accountable human?","requirement":"Every agent must carry authority that resolves to a named human principal. An agent that cannot trace its grant of authority to a named human is out of conformance by definition.","rationale":"Accountability cannot exist without a person at the end of the chain. Autonomy without a traceable principal is exactly the risk regulators are moving to close."},{"id":"usage","number":2,"name":"Usage","question":"What is this agent permitted to do — and what is explicitly out of bounds?","requirement":"Permitted actions must be declared in advance. Anything outside declared usage is denied by default, not allowed by omission.","rationale":"Open-ended agents fail open. A standard has to make the boundary explicit and make the default deny, so a gap in the rules is never a licence to act."},{"id":"audit","number":3,"name":"Audit","question":"Is every consequential action recorded in a form that survives a dispute?","requirement":"Consequential actions must produce a tamper-evident record — one that can be shown to be unaltered, not merely a log that can be edited later.","rationale":"An audit trail only matters if it holds up when challenged. A record that can be quietly changed proves nothing when it counts."},{"id":"revocation","number":4,"name":"Revocation","question":"Can its authority be withdrawn instantly — and proven withdrawn?","requirement":"Authority must be revocable in real time, and the revocation must be verifiable by a third party. A credential that cannot be cleanly killed is not governed.","rationale":"The moment you cannot stop an agent is the moment you no longer govern it. Revocation is the difference between control and hope."},{"id":"data","number":5,"name":"Data","question":"What data may it touch, on what basis, and where may that data go?","requirement":"Every data touch must have a lawful basis and a permitted destination. Data leaving its allowed boundary is a conformance failure.","rationale":"Most agent harm is a data event — the wrong information reaching the wrong place. Governing the data path is inseparable from governing the agent."}],"conformanceLevels":[{"level":"L0","name":"Unattested","summary":"The agent answers none of the five questions. Its authority, scope and data path are unknown.","criteria":"No governance envelope. The default state of most deployed agents today."},{"level":"L1","name":"Declared","summary":"The agent can answer all five questions. Its governance is documented and inspectable.","criteria":"A complete, readable answer to Grant, Usage, Audit, Revocation and Data exists."},{"level":"L2","name":"Enforced","summary":"The answers are binding. Actions outside policy are stopped before they execute — not merely flagged after.","criteria":"Policy is checked at the moment of action, and a “no” prevents the action."},{"level":"L3","name":"Provable","summary":"Enforcement leaves tamper-evident, admissible evidence, and authority can be revoked and proven revoked in real time.","criteria":"Every enforced decision is independently verifiable, and revocation is instant and provable."}],"governance":{"principle":"Open by design — conformance is earned, not granted","statement":"F-ACT is an open standard. Conformance is defined by capability, not permission: any implementation — any vendor, any language, any stack — that meets a tier’s published criteria conforms to that tier. No product, membership, or sign-off from the steward is required to reach any tier, and none can be withheld.","points":[{"title":"Capability, not permission","body":"A tier is reached by meeting its published criteria in a way an independent third party can check — never by approval from the steward. If you can prove it, you conform."},{"title":"The steward is not a gatekeeper","body":"Society OS maintains the specification and its versions; it does not decide who may implement it. Its own products are measured against the same tiers, on the same evidence, as anyone else’s."},{"title":"Free to read, cite, implement and require","body":"The standard is published to be used — in policy, in procurement, in vendor questionnaires, and in competing products. A standard only one company can meet is not a standard; this one is written to be met widely."}]},"patentPledge":{"title":"Patent Non-Assertion Pledge","version":"Version 1.0","entity":"Society OS Pty Ltd","headline":"Anyone may use, implement, build on, or require the core claims of F-ACT — including GUARD 3 · Provable — without a licence and without asking, for any purpose and by any method. Conformance is one use among many, not a condition.","summary":"The core claims of F-ACT are pledged never to be asserted against anyone. The pledge covers any use — including, but not limited to, conformance. It is irrevocable, royalty-free and worldwide. The claims are being placed with a neutral Swiss foundation so no company can ever take them back.","url":"https://openconformance.org/occ/pledge"},"meta":{"format":"application/json","formatsAvailable":{"html":"https://f-act.org/standard","json":"https://f-act.org/standard/spec.json","text":"https://f-act.org/standard/spec.txt"},"versionHistory":"https://f-act.org/f-act/changelog","registry":{"description":"Machine-queryable public register of organisations with an F-ACT conformance claim on record. Query by domain or name; entries are self-declared and reviewed before publication.","human":"https://f-act.org/registry","api":"https://f-act.org/api/public/registry","lookupByDomain":"https://f-act.org/api/public/registry?domain={domain}","resolveEntity":"https://f-act.org/api/public/registry/{domain-or-id}"},"contact":"https://f-act.org/f-act/contact","generated":"2026-08-19"}}