| says | Yes | The decision in one sentence, naming the rules that drove it. Written to be shown to whoever authorises the action. | |
| rules | No | Every rule considered: `id`, `state` (pass, fail or unknown), `checks` and `says`. THE TWO SENTENCES ARE DIFFERENT THINGS and the distinction is the audit trail. `checks` is the QUESTION the rule asks and never moves; `says` is WHAT WE FOUND and follows the state, so a failing rule reads as a failure. Until 2026-10-13 `says` carried the question in every state, which meant a `fail` arrived beside the claim it had just refuted — a model reading the prose rather than the state got the opposite of the decision. Read `state` to decide and `says` to explain; they can no longer disagree. | |
| byArea | No | The same coverage, PER QUESTION: counterparty, payment-intent, service, capital. Read this rather than the single `coverage` when the action moves money. The denominator is the rules the policy holds for that area, NOT the ones that happened to apply — so an area where nothing could be checked reports `none`, which is the fact, instead of reporting high coverage of nothing. | |
| limits | No | What a decision here is and is not. `allow` means no rule objected under this policy at this coverage, which is not a statement that the action is safe. | |
| policy | No | The policy applied: its intent, its ceiling and the coverage floor below which it abstains. | |
| checked | No | WHICH ACCEPTANCE QUESTIONS THIS POLICY PUT AT ALL: `riskBand`, `controller`, `amount`, as booleans. READ THIS BEFORE ACTING ON `decision`. FALSE is the dangerous value and the reason the field exists: it means the question was never put, which is NOT a question that passed. `permissive` returns `allow` on a vault that lost 92.8% of its value because it declares no risk ceiling, and a client reading only `decision` cannot see that. Derived from what the POLICY declares and never from how the subject turned out, so a refusal and a clean pass under one policy carry identical flags. | |
| reasons | Yes | Rule ids that decided. Look them up in the policy to see the sentence each one checks. | |
| coverage | Yes | How much of what the policy wanted was actually there. Below the policy floor the decision is `abstain` rather than `allow`. | |
| decision | Yes | `allow` is not “safe” and `abstain` is not “nothing found”. Read `decisions` in the answer for what each one means. | |
| proposal | No | What you asked about, read back, so a typo is visible before you act on the answer. | |
| required | No | Present only where you sent `requiredChecks`. `met`, `unmet` and `unknownIds`, with a sentence. An `unmet` entry is why the decision is ABSTAIN. | |
| decisions | No | What each decision word means, so a caller never has to guess. Read it before treating `allow` as approval or `abstain` as a clean result. | |
| maxAmountUsd | No | The most this policy permits for this proposal. Null where the action moves no money, and null on anything but an `allow`, because a limit printed beside a `review` reads as permission. | |
| policyIntent | No | What the policy is FOR. `risk-and-evidence` puts questions about the level AND about what we could read. `evidence-availability` asks only whether we could read enough — which is what `permissive` is: an availability-of-evidence policy rather than an investment risk policy. An `allow` from one is not an `allow` from the other. | |
| notApplicable | No | Rules this PROPOSAL does not raise, each with `why` and what to send to have it checked. Distinct from `missingEvidence`, which is a gap in our record: a payment naming no `resource` has no listing to be found in, so those rules do not apply and do not lower coverage. Send `resource` and two more checks run, both decisive. | |
| paymentIntent | No | Whether this payment was checked against WHAT IT IS BUYING, in one field. `not-verified` means the policy holds such rules and none of them ran, which on a payment is almost always a missing `resource`: the counterparty may have an excellent record and nothing has compared this amount to this service. `verified` means at least one reached a verdict. `not-applicable` means the policy asks nothing about it, or the action is not a payment. | |
| policyVersion | Yes | Carried so an answer given today can be reproduced after the rules change. | |
| missingEvidence | No | Rule ids whose evidence we do not hold. These lower `coverage` and are NEVER counted as objections. | |