epicon

🛡️ EPICON Guard

Git commits tell you WHAT changed. EPICON tells you WHY.

No consequential action without recorded intent. Mobius is the constitutional witness, not the actor.

What is EPICON?

EPICON is the Mobius Substrate constitutional principle that no consequential action may occur without recorded intent. EPICON Guard is its first enforcement surface: a GitHub Action that validates a structured Intent Publication in every pull request and classifies the PR into a consequence tier before merge.

Traditional Git tracks what changed, when, and who. It does not track why it changed, when the authority to change it expires, or what would make you revert. EPICON Guard adds that layer.

The protocol does not prevent actions. It makes divergence legible, attributable, and time-bound.

What ships today: the GitHub Action

Add five lines to any repo:

# .github/workflows/epicon-guard.yml
name: EPICON Guard
on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, edited, synchronize, reopened]
permissions:
  contents: read
  pull-requests: read
jobs:
  epicon:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: kaizencycle/epicon@v1

Then include an intent block in your PR body:

```intent
epicon_id: EPICON_C-367_CORE_stripe-integration_v1
ledger_id: your-github-username
scope: core
mode: normal
issued_at: 2026-07-09T00:00:00Z
expires_at: 2026-08-09T00:00:00Z
justification:
  VALUES INVOKED: integrity, transparency, cost-efficiency
  REASONING: Current provider fees are 2.9%; Stripe offers 2.4% plus
    stronger fraud detection. Projected savings $50k/year.
  ANCHORS:
    - Provider fee schedules (public pricing pages)
    - Internal fraud-rate benchmarks, Q2 report
  BOUNDARIES: Does not apply to invoicing or payout flows
  COUNTERFACTUAL: If fraud rate rises above 0.5%, this justification fails
counterfactuals:
  - If fraud rate increases >0.5%, revert
  - If A/B test shows worse conversion, stay with current provider
```

To make the gate binding, mark Intent Publication Gate as a required status check in branch protection. That is the moment EPICON becomes a precondition gate rather than an audit log.

What it enforces

Every check maps to a named invariant from EPICON-02 (Intent Publication & Divergence Protocol):

#	Invariant	Enforcement
I1	Intent must precede authority	Intent block required; missing intent fails consequential PRs
I2	Intent immutable once published	`justification_hash` (SHA-256) emitted as a witness
I3	Authority scoped and time-bounded	`scope` enum + `issued_at` / `expires_at` validated
I4	Divergence observable, not blocked	Files outside the scope envelope are flagged, never blocked
I5	Expiration is mandatory	Missing or past `expires_at` fails; re-publication required
I6	No narrative substitutes verification	Structured justification required — prose never passes the gate

Consequence tiers

PRs are classified EP-1 / EP-2 / EP-3 per the EPICON Tiering Specification:

Rule 5.1 — tier is computed from a declarative path registry, never from the proposer’s self-assessment. The PR’s own Risk Tier checkboxes are advisory.
Rule 5.2 — paths matching no registry pattern classify EP-3. Deny-by-default: unknown ≠ harmless.
Rule 5.3 — PR tier = the maximum tier across all changed files.
Failure matrix (§8) — EP-1 fails open with honest backfill marking; EP-2 quarantines; EP-3 fails closed.

Override the default registry by committing .github/epicon-policy.json — see policy/epicon-policy.example.json.

Outputs

tier · status (PASS | PASS_WITH_BACKFILL | QUARANTINE | FAIL_CLOSED) · epicon_id · justification_hash · divergence_count — consumable by downstream workflow steps.

Source of truth

The Action implements — it does not define. Canon lives in the Mobius Substrate monorepo:

docs/epicon/ — EPICON-01/02/03 specifications, EJ schema, templates
docs/specs/EPICON_TIERING_SPEC_v0.1.md — EP-1/2/3 grammar
schemas/epicon_constitutional_v1.schema.json — ledger commitment schema

Status

Component	Status
GitHub Action (Intent Publication Gate)	✅ Live — `kaizencycle/epicon@v1`
Landing site (GitHub Pages)	✅ Live
GitHub App (Checks API, intent immutability, `/epicon revalidate`)	🔄 Roadmap — v1
CPC ledger attestation (EP-3 constitutional commitments)	🔄 Roadmap — v2
Dashboard / Corporate Integrity Index (CII)	💡 Concept
GitLab / Jira / Slack integrations	💡 Concept

If it isn’t marked ✅, it doesn’t exist yet. This README does not sell futures.

Repository layout

action.yml          # Composite action — the consumable entrypoint
src/validate.mjs    # Zero-dependency validator (Node ≥ 20)
policy/             # Example tier policy registry
examples/           # Consumer workflow for adopting repos
test/               # Fixtures + classifier tests
docs/               # Product spec and intent records
website/            # Landing page (GitHub Pages)

Contributing

git clone https://github.com/kaizencycle/epicon.git
cd epicon
node test/classify.test.mjs

Every PR to this repo is validated by the Guard it ships. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

About Mobius Substrate

EPICON Guard is part of Mobius Substrate, civic AI governance infrastructure. Mobius is not a data warehouse and not a decision-maker — it is a constitutional witness. Decision-making remains with humans and authorized systems; EPICON records, gates, and attests.

Related components: the Mobius ledger (integrity-backed audit chain), MIC (integrity-gated credit), and the sentinel council (ATLAS, ZEUS, EVE, JADE, AUREA and roster).

License

AGPL-3.0. The EPICON specifications in Mobius-Substrate are CC0 1.0 (public domain) — the protocol is free for anyone to implement; this implementation is copyleft.

🛡️ Git commits tell you WHAT changed. EPICON tells you WHY.

Built by kaizencycle · Mobius Substrate · “We heal as we walk.”

This site is open source. Improve this page.