RecourseOS

Recourse is an MCP server that evaluates Terraform plans, shell commands, and tool calls before execution. It returns structured facts — recoverability tier, evidence assessment, and risk level — so callers can make context-aware decisions. Agents call Recourse before they act; humans see what the agent checked.

Add to Your Agent

One config block. Works with Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, and any MCP-compatible client.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "recourseos": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "recourse-cli@latest", "mcp", "serve"]
    }
  }
}

The server exposes five tools:

Plus a resource agents can read:

Each tool returns:

• riskAssessment: engine's summary read — allow, warn, escalate, or block

• recoverability: tier and reasoning for each mutation

• evidence: what was found, what's missing, what's needed for confident classification

• crossActionRisks: dangerous patterns where individual actions are safe but their combination is unrecoverable (e.g., deleting a backup + the database it backs up)

The engine emits facts. Callers interpret them in context — a block assessment in staging might be acceptable; in production it might require approval.

Related MCP server: gov-mcp

What Agents Get

Terraform plan says:

- aws_db_instance.main will be destroyed

Recourse tells the agent what that means:

aws_db_instance.main
recoverability: unrecoverable
reason: skip_final_snapshot=true, backup_retention_period=0, deletion_protection=false
riskAssessment: block

The agent can interpret these facts: "Recourse assessed this as block-level risk — deletes the database with no backup. Should I proceed?"

That's different from "I deleted your production database."

Agent Instructions

Agents can read the built-in safety protocol from recourse://instructions. Or use this prompt:

Before executing destructive operations, call RecourseOS:
- Shell commands → recourse_evaluate_shell
- Terraform plans → recourse_evaluate_terraform
- Other MCP tools → recourse_evaluate_mcp_call

Interpret the riskAssessment:
- allow: proceed
- warn: proceed with caution, inform user
- escalate: stop and ask user for approval
- block: do not proceed without human review

If escalate/block includes verificationSuggestions, run those commands
and call recourse_evaluate_with_evidence to potentially upgrade the assessment.

CLI Install

For humans running preflight checks directly:

npm install -g recourse-cli@latest
recourse --version

Run a preflight check:

recourse preflight shell 'aws s3 rm s3://prod-audit-logs --recursive'

Or run without installing:

npx -y recourse-cli@latest preflight shell 'aws s3 rm s3://prod-audit-logs --recursive'

Quick Start

terraform plan -out=plan.bin
terraform show -json plan.bin > plan.json

recourse plan plan.json

Open the interactive terminal UI:

recourse tui
recourse tui --source shell --input 'aws s3 rm s3://prod-audit-logs --recursive'

Fail CI if a plan contains unrecoverable changes:

recourse plan plan.json --fail-on unrecoverable

Example Output

BLAST RADIUS REPORT
===================

DIRECT CHANGES

  X DELETE aws_db_instance.main
    Recoverability: unrecoverable
    skip_final_snapshot=true, no backup retention; data will be lost

  X DELETE google_storage_bucket.audit
    Recoverability: recoverable-from-backup
    GCS bucket versioning is enabled; object generations may be recoverable

  ~ DELETE azurerm_role_assignment.reader
    Recoverability: reversible
    Azure role assignment/definition is config-only and can be reapplied

SUMMARY
  Unrecoverable:         1 resource
  Recoverable (backup):  1 resource
  Reversible:            1 resource

Recoverability Tiers

Multi-Cloud Coverage

Known resources use hand-written deterministic rules and remain authoritative.

AWS: RDS, DynamoDB, S3, EBS, EFS, EC2, Lambda, AMIs, VPCs, security groups, EIPs, load balancers, Route53, IAM, KMS, Secrets Manager, SNS/SQS, CloudWatch logs, ElastiCache, Neptune.

GCP: Cloud Storage (versioning), Cloud SQL (protection, backups), BigQuery, Secret Manager, IAM, service accounts, DNS, persistent disks, snapshots, KMS, GKE.

Azure: Storage accounts (soft delete), Azure SQL/MSSQL, PostgreSQL/MySQL Flexible Server, MariaDB, Cosmos DB, Key Vault, role assignments, Azure AD, DNS, managed disks, AKS.

For unknown resource types, Recourse uses a three-layer classification system:

1. Exact mappings: ~180 manually verified resource → category mappings across AWS, GCP, Azure, and OCI.

2. BitNet classifier: A 1-bit quantized neural network trained on 400+ resource types across 10+ cloud providers.

3. Pattern fallback: Regex-based classification for the long tail.

Production accuracy is 90.5% on a held-out test set. Low-confidence classifications return needs-review rather than false approval.

Commands

Terraform Plan Analysis

recourse plan plan.json
recourse plan plan.json --state terraform.tfstate
recourse plan plan.json --format json
recourse plan plan.json --classifier

Explain a Verdict

recourse explain plan.json aws_db_instance.main
recourse explain plan.json aws_db_instance.main --format json

Generic Consequence Reports

recourse evaluate terraform plan.json --classifier
recourse evaluate shell 'aws s3 rm s3://prod-audit-logs --recursive'
recourse evaluate mcp '{"server":"aws","tool":"s3.delete_bucket","arguments":{"bucket":"prod-audit-logs"}}'

Terminal Preflight

recourse preflight terraform plan.json --classifier
recourse preflight shell 'kubectl delete namespace payments'
recourse preflight mcp mcp-call.json

Interactive TUI

recourse tui
recourse tui --source shell --input 'aws s3 rm s3://prod-audit-logs --recursive'
recourse tui --source terraform --input plan.json --classifier

MCP Server

recourse mcp serve

See docs/mcp-setup.md for full setup and docs/agent-interface.md for the schema reference.

Shell Wrapper

Automatically check RecourseOS before dangerous shell commands execute. Add to your shell profile:

eval "$(recourse wrap)"

Now rm, aws, kubectl, and terraform commands check RecourseOS first:

rm -rf /tmp/important
# recourse: escalate - Recoverability needs human review
# Proceed? [y/N]

Or execute with explicit checking:

recourse exec "rm -rf /tmp/test"

Attestation

Every evaluation response includes a cryptographic attestation (Ed25519 signature). Verify with:

recourse verify attestation.json

Or pipe from stdin:

cat response.json | jq '.attestation' | recourse verify -

Read-Only AWS Evidence

recourse evidence aws-s3 prod-audit-logs --region us-east-1 > s3-evidence.json
recourse evidence aws-rds prod-db --region us-east-1 > rds-evidence.json

recourse evaluate shell 'aws s3 rb s3://prod-audit-logs --force' \
  --aws-s3-evidence s3-evidence.json

Supported: aws-s3, aws-rds, aws-dynamodb, aws-iam-role, aws-kms-key.

Supported Resource List

recourse resources

Development

npm install
npm run build
npm test
npm run test:all

Regenerate docs after changing resource handlers:

npm run docs:all

Limitations

Recourse analyzes the plan, state, command, and evidence you provide. It cannot:

• Prove that out-of-band backups exist unless evidence is supplied.

• Inspect every object, row, secret, or dependency behind a resource.

• Guarantee cross-account or cross-region recovery.

• Predict races between planning and applying.

• Replace human review for opaque destructive resources.

The safety posture is conservative: when evidence is incomplete, Recourse returns higher-risk assessments (escalate or block) rather than understating risk.

License

MIT