Ideas · Builder Notes

Per-use-case gateway failure modes without a forward-without-decision mode

Kognita alpha keeps fail closed as the default when the evidence store is down, and adds a narrow degraded mode per use case.

Ahmed Muzammil4 October 2026

Context

Fail closed everywhere is safe but blunt. Some use cases can tolerate a local model with no client data while the store recovers.

A use case can be set to degraded.
While the store is down, only a call to a local model with no client data may proceed, and the decision and model evidence are written once the store accepts writes again.

There is no mode that forwards a call without a decision. Degraded changes what is allowed, never whether a decision is made.

Fail closed remains the default, and the outage behaviour already shipped is unchanged.

A known replay edge case around policy windows closing exactly at the decision time was left as it was, and noted.

Make availability a per-use-case choice, but keep the decision mandatory.

Kognita is an open-source alpha. This note comes from Kognita PR #17 in the Kognita repository.