Cordum_io

Quickstart

First Time?

Option A: Install from source

One command stands up the full stack — API gateway, scheduler, safety kernel, workflow engine, context engine, dashboard, NATS, and TLS-secured Redis — with auto-generated secrets, auto-provisioned certificates, and a post-deploy smoke test that exercises a real approval workflow:

git clone https://github.com/cordum-io/cordum.git
cd cordum
./tools/scripts/quickstart.sh

Prerequisites: Docker Desktop v4+ (or Engine v20.10+ with Compose v2, ≥ 4 GB RAM allocated), Go 1.26.3+ (for first-run cert generation), and curl. On Windows use MSYS2 / Git Bash / WSL.

What you get at the end:

• Dashboard at http://localhost:8082 — log in as admin / ChangeMe123! (the default dev password, also saved to .env as CORDUM_ADMIN_PASSWORD; change it before exposing the stack).

• Gateway at http://localhost:8081 with a generated CORDUM_API_KEY in .env.

• TLS CA, server, and client keypairs under ./certs/.

• A working approval-gate workflow proven by the built-in platform_smoke.sh run.

Full walkthrough, platform notes, and troubleshooting: docs/quickstart.md.

Option B: Run the published images

Prerequisites: Docker Desktop v4+ or Docker Engine v20.10+ with the Compose v2 plugin (≥ 4 GB RAM allocated), jq (recommended, for parsing API responses), and Go 1.26.3+ (for one-time local cert generation — docker compose mounts ./certs but does not create it).

git clone https://github.com/cordum-io/cordum.git
cd cordum
go run ./cmd/cordumctl generate-certs   # writes ./certs/{ca,server,client}
export CORDUM_API_KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
export REDIS_PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -hex 16)
docker compose pull         # pulls every Cordum service from ghcr.io
docker compose up -d        # starts the stack — no image build needed

Dashboard: http://localhost:8082 Login: this path leaves user auth off by default — sign in on the dashboard with your CORDUM_API_KEY. To enable admin password login instead, set CORDUM_USER_AUTH_ENABLED=true and a policy-compliant CORDUM_ADMIN_PASSWORD (≥ 12 chars, with an uppercase letter, a digit, and a special character) in .env, then docker compose up -d. (The quickstart script in Option A does this for you.)

Pin a specific release by exporting CORDUM_VERSION=1.2.3 before docker compose pull. Defaults to :latest, which only moves on stable release tags (pre-release suffixes such as -rc.1 never promote :latest).

Every release-tag image is signed with cosign keyless OIDC. The example below verifies api-gateway; repeat the same command (swapping the image name) for each of the seven Cordum images before deploying to production — verifying one image does not attest the rest:

cosign verify ghcr.io/cordum-io/cordum/api-gateway:1.2.3 \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com \
  --certificate-identity-regexp 'https://github\.com/cordum-io/cordum/\.github/workflows/docker\.yml@refs/tags/v.*'

See docs/deployment/images.md for the full image catalogue, a verify-all-images snippet, multi-arch pull instructions, and tag policy.

cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env: set CORDUM_API_KEY (or generate: openssl rand -hex 32)
export CORDUM_API_KEY="your-key-here"
go run ./cmd/cordumctl up
open http://localhost:8082

helm install cordum oci://ghcr.io/cordum-io/cordum/charts/cordum \
  --namespace cordum --create-namespace \
  --set secrets.apiKey=$(openssl rand -hex 32) \
  --set redis.auth.password=$(openssl rand -hex 32) \
  --set ingress.enabled=true \
  --set ingress.className=nginx \
  --set ingress.api.host=api.cordum.example.com \
  --set ingress.dashboard.host=cordum.example.com

--set values land in the Helm release's stored values (and your shell history) — fine for a quick eval, but for production prefer redis.auth.existingSecret (see cordum-helm/values.yaml) over redis.auth.password, and patch secrets.apiKey into the rendered Secret out-of-band rather than passing it on the command line; that chart doesn't yet have an existingSecret equivalent for the API key.

See cordum-helm/ for the full Helm chart reference. The chart is also available on Artifact Hub.

Container images (multi-arch: linux/amd64 + linux/arm64):

Full catalogue, tag policy, cosign verification recipe, and multi-arch notes: docs/deployment/images.md.

Ports

Port conflicts? If any port is already in use, either stop the conflicting service or override ports in your .env file before starting the stack.

After Setup

# Load the generated API key into this shell (skip if already exported)
export CORDUM_API_KEY=$(grep CORDUM_API_KEY .env | cut -d= -f2)

# Submit a test job
curl -sS --cacert ./certs/ca/ca.crt \
  -X POST https://localhost:8081/api/v1/jobs \
  -H "X-API-Key: $CORDUM_API_KEY" -H "X-Tenant-ID: default" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"topic":"job.default","prompt":"hello"}'

# Stop the stack
docker compose down

# View logs
docker compose logs -f api-gateway

Troubleshooting

For detailed troubleshooting, see docs/troubleshooting.md.

See a 3-verdict demo

Once the stack is up, install the demo-quickstart pack and run the governance demo:

cordumctl pack install ./demo/quickstart/pack
cordumctl demo run quickstart

A single hello, operator! workflow fans out to three topics and exercises every safety-kernel decision class in under 30 seconds:

  +--------------------+--------------------------+--------------------+---------
  | Step               | Topic                    | Verdict            | Reason
  +--------------------+--------------------------+--------------------+---------
  | greet              | job.demo-quickstart.greet           | ALLOW              | Safe…
  | attempt_delete     | job.demo-quickstart.delete-all      | DENY               | Block…
  | escalate_admin     | job.demo-quickstart.admin           | REQUIRE_APPROVAL   | Sign…
  +--------------------+--------------------------+--------------------+---------

Full walkthrough, rule-by-rule explanation, and extension recipe: demo/quickstart/README.md.

Edge Quickstart (Compliance Firewall for Claude Code)

Cordum Edge governs Claude Code tool calls in the developer's terminal — the hook denies risky actions before they run, requires approval on edits, and exports a redacted evidence bundle for every session. Once the platform stack is up (above), point Claude Code at Cordum:

export CORDUM_GATEWAY=https://localhost:8081
export CORDUM_API_KEY=$(grep CORDUM_API_KEY .env | cut -d= -f2)
export CORDUM_TENANT_ID=default
./bin/cordumctl edge claude

The wrapper renders a temporary settings.json, spawns cordum-agentd on a local loopback nonce, and starts Claude Code with the command hook installed. Read .env is denied; Edit/Write requires approval; safe reads pass through untouched. The dashboard shows the live session timeline at /edge/sessions.

For approved destructive actions, Edge does not trust the approval store alone: the ProvenanceGate also requires a resolved approval audit event for the same tenant, approval_ref, and action_hash. An approval-requested event by itself does not satisfy provenance, and raw prompts, transcripts, and tool payloads are kept out of audit evidence.

Full 30-minute walkthrough: docs/quickstart-edge.md. Reference: docs/edge/README.md.

Related MCP server: varco_mcp

Why Pre-Dispatch Action Governance?

Agents act with real authority: cloud credentials, database connections, authenticated MCP sessions. Common controls each sit at a different boundary, and none of them is the point where a specific action is dispatched:

• Runtime sandboxes isolate the host, not the authority. A container or microVM limits what a process can do to the machine it runs on. It does not limit what an agent can do with credentials or sessions it legitimately holds.

• Observability records an action after it runs. Logs and traces explain an incident; they do not hold the call that caused it.

• Model and prompt guardrails sit at the LLM boundary. They check what goes into and comes out of a model. Executing the resulting tool call or job happens in the code that dispatches it.

Cordum puts a policy decision at that dispatch boundary:

• Normalized, hashed actions. Approval-gated CAP jobs, action descriptors, MCP tool calls (tenant, server, tool, target path) and Cordum Edge evaluate requests are each reduced to a canonical form and hashed with SHA-256.

• Explicit verdicts. Policy evaluation yields ALLOW, DENY, REQUIRE_APPROVAL, THROTTLE or ALLOW_WITH_CONSTRAINTS. The gateway, scheduler and Edge evaluate path treat an unknown verdict as DENY.

• Hash-bound approvals. A gated action's approval is looked up by tenant and approval_ref and must carry the same SHA-256 action_hash as the action being run; a changed payload is rejected as approval_mismatch. Self-approval, expired and already-consumed approvals are rejected too.

• Declarative YAML policies. Rules in config/safety.yaml match on tenant, topic, capability, risk tags, actor and labels; the shipped policy denies anything no rule matches (default_decision: deny).

• Risk tags and agent risk tiers. Rules can match risk_tags on any plan. Agent identities, which carry the risk tier that agent_risk_tiers rules match, require an Enterprise license.

• Cordum Edge. A local hook evaluates coding-agent tool calls (Claude Code today) against the gateway before they run. See Edge Quickstart.

The Solution: Cordum Agent Control Plane

Cordum is an Agent Control Plane that provides a deterministic governance layer for probabilistic AI minds. It allows you to define, enforce, and audit the behavior of your Autonomous AI Agents across any framework or model.

graph TB
    subgraph CP [AGENT CONTROL PLANE]
        direction LR
        G[API Gateway] --- S[Scheduler] --- SK[Safety Kernel]
        S --- WE[Workflow Engine]
    end
    
    subgraph AGENTS [AUTONOMOUS AGENT POOLS]
        direction LR
        A1[Financial Ops]
        A2[Data Science]
        A3[Customer Service]
    end
    
    CP -->|Governed Jobs| AGENTS
    AGENTS -->|Audit Trail| CP

Governance Across the Lifecycle

Cordum's Before/During/Across framework provides exhaustive control over your agent operations:

graph LR
    subgraph BEFORE [1. BEFORE - Governance]
        P[Policy Evaluation] --> S[Safety Gating]
        S --> H[Human Approval]
    end
    subgraph DURING [2. DURING - Safety]
        M[Real-time Monitoring] --> C[Circuit Breakers]
        C --> A[Live Approvals]
    end
    subgraph ACROSS [3. ACROSS - Observability]
        F[Fleet Health] --> T[Audit Trail]
        T --> O[Optimization]
    end
    BEFORE --> DURING
    DURING --> ACROSS

• BEFORE (Governance): Define declarative policies that evaluate job requests before an agent executes. Trigger safety kernel checks, throttle risky actions, or flag operations for human approval.

• DURING (Safety): Real-time visibility into active agent runs. Monitor progress, handle step-level approvals, and enforce timeouts or circuit breakers on the fly.

• ACROSS (Observability): Manage your entire fleet from a single control plane. Aggregate audit trails, track capability-based routing, and observe agent pool health in real-time.

Cordum Edge: Compliance Firewall for AI agents

Cordum Edge extends the control plane to local AI-agent actions. For Claude Code, cordumctl edge claude launches the real P0 path — command hook, local cordum-agentd, Gateway Edge APIs, Safety Kernel policy/evaluate, approvals, artifact pointers, and dashboard evidence.

Cordum stays quiet until governance matters. Developers see Cordum exactly when it protects them, their team, and production: before risky tools run, when an action needs approval, and when evidence must be exported. The wrapper is the developer/demo path; enterprise enforcement requires managed Claude settings and endpoint controls.

Approval provenance is resolved-only: destructive retries must have a matching approved approval record and a canonical resolved approval audit event for the same tenant/ref/hash. Requested-only audit rows are lifecycle context, not proof that the action was approved.

Start here: Edge overview, Claude Code guide, manual demo, and Edge API.

Development

The published-images path above pulls Cordum binaries from ghcr.io. Contributors who need to rebuild from source use the development override file:

make dev-up      # docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.dev.yml up -d --build
make dev-logs    # tail compose logs
make dev-down    # docker compose down

docker-compose.dev.yml re-pins every Cordum service to a local cordum/<name>:dev tag and forces the build: context, so source changes are reflected on the next --build. Upstream images (NATS, Redis) are untouched. See Makefile and docker-compose.dev.yml for full details.

Other useful contributor commands:

Key Features

Architecture

cordum/
├── cmd/                          # Service entrypoints + CLI
│   ├── cordum-api-gateway/       # API gateway (HTTP/WS + gRPC)
│   ├── cordum-scheduler/         # Scheduler + safety gating
│   ├── cordum-safety-kernel/     # Policy evaluation
│   ├── cordum-workflow-engine/   # Workflow orchestration
│   ├── cordum-context-engine/    # Optional context/memory service
│   └── cordumctl/                # CLI
├── core/                         # Core libraries
│   ├── controlplane/             # Gateway, scheduler, safety kernel
│   ├── context/                  # Context engine implementation
│   ├── infra/                    # Config, storage, bus, metrics
│   ├── protocol/                 # API protos + CAP aliases
│   └── workflow/                 # Workflow engine
├── dashboard/                    # React UI
├── sdk/                          # SDK + worker runtime
├── cordum-helm/                  # Helm chart
├── deploy/k8s/                   # Kubernetes manifests
└── docs/                         # Documentation

Documentation

Protocol: CAP — The Open Standard for Agent Governance

Cordum implements CAP (Cordum Agent Protocol), an open protocol specifically designed for distributed AI agent governance. CAP provides a unified interface for defining agent capabilities, submitting jobs, and enforcing safety policies across heterogeneous agent pools.

CAP vs. MCP: Why You Need Both

While both are essential, they solve different parts of the agent stack:

• MCP is for within the agent — it defines how a model calls local tools.

• CAP is for above the agent — it defines the governance control plane for the entire agent fleet.

Use CAP for high-level orchestration and safety gating, and MCP inside your agents for fine-grained tool integration.

Read the full deep dive: MCP vs CAP: Why Your AI Agents Need Both Protocols

MCP Server

Cordum includes an MCP server framework with:

• Standalone stdio mode via cmd/cordum-mcp (for Claude Desktop/Code local integration)

• Gateway HTTP/SSE mode via /mcp/message and /mcp/sse (when mcp.enabled=true)

See docs/mcp-server.md for setup, auth headers, and client configuration examples.

SDK

The Go SDK makes it easy to build CAP-compatible workers:

import (
    "log"

    "github.com/cordum/cordum/sdk/runtime"
)

type Input struct {
    Prompt string `json:"prompt"`
}

type Output struct {
    Summary string `json:"summary"`
}

func main() {
    // AllowUnsigned is required when the worker holds no signing keys;
    // CAP fails closed at startup otherwise. Provision worker trust keys
    // for anything beyond local development -- see docs/sdk/handshake.md.
    agent := &runtime.Agent{Retries: 2, AllowUnsigned: true}

    runtime.Register(agent, "job.summarize", func(ctx runtime.Context, input Input) (Output, error) {
        // Your agent logic here
        return Output{Summary: input.Prompt}, nil
    })

    if err := agent.Start(); err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
    select {}
}

SDKs: Go (stable, this repo) | Python (pip install cap-sdk-python) | Node (npm install cap-sdk-node)

Stable CAP Go, Python, and Node runtimes implement the same authenticated protobuf worker-trust contract. A legacy capability handshake or heartbeat is telemetry, not identity proof, unless it is bound into an accepted session. Deployments remain at the explicit compatibility default CORDUM_SDK_HANDSHAKE=off + CORDUM_HEARTBEAT_MODE=authority until worker proof keys and control-plane signing authorities are provisioned. Follow the authenticated worker trust guide before enabling warn or enforce.

Integration Packs

Extend Cordum with integration packs for Slack, GitHub, AWS, Jira, Terraform, Datadog, PagerDuty, and more. Each pack is an installable overlay of workflows, schemas and config/policy fragments (docs/pack.md); Core does not deploy pack workers, which run as separate deployments.

Browse all integrations →

Community

• Discord: Join the conversation

• GitHub Discussions: Ask questions

• Twitter/X: @Cordum_io

• Email: See SECURITY.md for contact details

Enterprise

Cordum Enterprise features (shipped in core, unlocked by license entitlement):

• SSO/SAML/OIDC integration + SCIM provisioning

• Advanced RBAC with role hierarchy

• SIEM export (webhook, syslog, Datadog, CloudWatch)

• Legal hold + velocity rules + agent identity

• Priority support

See docs/enterprise.md for the full entitlement matrix. The formerly separate cordum-enterprise repo was retired 2026-04-23.

Governance

Cordum follows a transparent governance model with a protocol stability pledge, maintainer structure, and clear decision-making process. See GOVERNANCE.md for details including:

• Protocol Stability: CAP v2 wire format frozen until February 2027

• Security: SECURITY.md for vulnerability reporting

• Versioning: Semantic versioning with deprecation policy

Roadmap

See ROADMAP.md for the full feature roadmap, completed milestones, and planned work.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for a detailed log of all changes by version.

Where Cordum Fits in the Agent Stack

Each layer below enforces at a different boundary, and they can be combined. Cordum is the action control plane layer; it is meant to run alongside the others, not to replace them. Descriptions of other projects paraphrase their own documentation.

Contributing

We welcome contributions! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines. Check out our good first issues to get started.

License

Cordum ships from three repositories under two licenses. The table follows each repository's LICENSE file and package metadata; the LICENSE files are the authoritative terms.

The BUSL-1.1 parameters in LICENSE:

Additional Use Grant: You may make use of the Licensed Work for any purpose, including production use and self-hosted deployments, provided that you do not use the Licensed Work to provide a Competitive Offering.

• Change Date: 2029-01-01, or the fourth anniversary of a version's first public distribution under the license, whichever comes first.

• Change License: Apache License, Version 2.0 (Apache-2.0). On the earlier of those two dates, rights under Apache-2.0 replace the BUSL-1.1 grant for that version.

• Other use: "If your use of the Licensed Work does not comply with the requirements currently in effect as described in this License, you must purchase a commercial license from the Licensor, its affiliated entities, or authorized resellers, or you must refrain from using the Licensed Work."

See LICENSE for the full terms.

Runtime entitlements are separate from the license. The control plane enforces plan limits in code. Without a valid Cordum license it runs on the Community defaults in core/licensing/tiers.go: 3 workers, 3 concurrent jobs, 500 requests per second, 7-day audit retention, single approval mode and no custom policy bundles. It also falls back to these defaults when a license cannot be loaded or fails verification (core/licensing/resolver.go). These are product limits, not BUSL-1.1 terms; see Enterprise.

Versioning

Cordum core and CAP release independently, each with its own tags (VERSIONING.md):

• Cordum core (v<major>.<minor>.<patch> tags, currently 1.x). A v* tag builds and signs the container images for api-gateway, scheduler, safety-kernel, workflow-engine, context-engine, mcp, dashboard and the demo quickstart worker, and publishes the Helm chart (docker.yml). The separate desktop binary workflow builds cordum-hook, cordum-agentd and cordum-claude; publication requires its signed-manifest gate to pass. cordumctl is built from source (make build). The default docker compose stack runs api-gateway, scheduler, safety-kernel, workflow-engine, context-engine and dashboard with NATS and Redis. Cordum's own Python and TypeScript SDKs use separate sdk-python-v* and sdk-ts-v* tags.

• CAP (v2.x tags). The protocol and its SDKs release from cordum-io/cap. Cordum consumes a pinned CAP release through go.mod (github.com/cordum-io/cap/v2 v2.17.0 at the time of writing), so a CAP SDK release does not require a core release, and a core release does not require a CAP release.

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