Ideas · Builder Notes
Circuit breakers, revocation by dimension and kill-switch drills
Kognita alpha 0.4 trips a circuit breaker on registered thresholds, revokes by agent, model, provider, tool, client or use case, and records kill-switch drills.
Context
When something goes wrong at machine speed, you need to stop it precisely and prove you can.
Decision
- kognita.breaker trips a policy when flags in a window reach a registered threshold, and resets only for the accountable owner with a citation.
- kognita revoke stops by dimension.
- kognita evidence affected lists clients who received output in a window.
- kognita drill run records who activated a kill switch and how long until the next decision was denied.
Why
A denial is not receipt, so the affected-client query only lists clients who actually received output. A revoked provider stays revoked until every accountable owner has cited a reinstatement.
Outcome
A high-materiality use case with no drill scheduled is already overdue and denies.
Open
Nothing trips until a threshold is registered. There is no built-in default, which is a deliberate choice.
An untested kill switch is a hope. Schedule the drill and make an overdue drill fail closed.
Sources
Kognita is an open-source alpha. This note comes from Kognita PR #43 in the Kognita repository.