System Card SAFETY.md

Safety & Governance

Safety is first-class at SILENTPATTERN. This document defines what the system can do, what it cannot do, how it is evaluated, and how incidents are handled.

PUBLIC
Core Safety Principles

1. Fail-Closed by Default: When in doubt, the system denies action rather than proceeding. Ambiguous requests are escalated to human review.

2. Minimal Privilege: Systems operate with the least permissions necessary. Access is scoped, time-limited, and auditable.

3. Transparency First: All actions are logged. Transcripts are exportable. No hidden operations.

What the System CAN Do
  • • Process text-based queries and generate responses
  • • Execute predefined research workflows
  • • Generate reports with uncertainty bounds
  • • Log all interactions for audit
  • • Operate within scoped permissions
What the System CANNOT Do
  • • Access external systems without explicit approval
  • • Execute code in production environments
  • • Make financial or legal decisions
  • • Operate without audit trails
  • • Override human approval gates
Incident Response Protocol

Detection: Anomaly monitoring on all system outputs. Threshold alerts for unusual patterns.

Containment: Automatic suspension of affected workflows. Isolation of compromised components.

Response: Human review within 1 hour for critical incidents. Full audit trail preservation.

Recovery: Root cause analysis. System updates. Public disclosure where appropriate.

Governance Framework
Constraints, evaluations, and oversight mechanisms.
Agent Governance
Agents operate under explicit role definitions with scoped permissions. Every action requires either pre-approval or falls within a defined allowlist.
  • • Role-based access control (RBAC)
  • • Action logging with timestamps
  • • Human-in-the-loop checkpoints
Data Handling
No client secrets on client-side. Server-side model access only. Data retention follows explicit policies with user control.
  • • No persistent storage of sensitive data
  • • Encrypted transit and at-rest
  • • User-controlled data deletion
Red Teaming & Evaluation
Regular adversarial testing. Preregistered evaluation protocols. External review for critical systems.
  • • Monthly adversarial probes
  • • Quarterly external audits
  • • Continuous monitoring dashboards
Ethical Commitments
We do not build systems for surveillance, deception, or autonomous weapons. All deployments require ethical review.
View Research Report Concern
Last updated: January 2026