witness

README

Witness

Witness is a deterministic Go CLI for evidence-backed, single-pass software review. It freezes the reviewed source and an owner-authored Charter, validates finder output, plans independent verification, assembles retained evidence, adjudicates findings, and appends the resulting lineage to an append-only ledger.

Witness deliberately does not edit reviewed source, apply findings, retry models, add review roles, or own an iteration loop. Those decisions remain with the caller or repository owner.

The project is early-stage v0.x software. Its JSON contracts are strict and versioned; compatibility changes are made explicitly rather than inferred.

Requirements

• Go 1.23 or newer, using a currently supported security patch release.
• Git for freezing repository snapshots.
• convo-relay for relay-backed verification. Witness can record an explicit degraded, relay-absent pass when convo-relay is unavailable.

Install

Build the two commands directly:

go install github.com/charlesnpx/witness/cmd/witness@v0.4.1
go install github.com/charlesnpx/witness/cmd/witness-harness@v0.4.1

Use the current supported v0.x release tag (shown: v0.4.1) for canonical GitHub module-path installs. The legacy v0.1.0 and v0.2.0 tags predate that path and are incompatible with those installs.

Alternatively, clone the repository and use the delegated installer:

git clone https://github.com/charlesnpx/witness.git
cd witness
./install-skill.sh --plan --target all --json
./install-skill.sh --install --target all --json

The all target installs binaries beneath ~/.local/bin and the shipped skill and relay bundle beneath the Codex and Claude skill directories. Use --install-root to stage the installation somewhere else, or select only tools, codex, or claude with --target.

Quick start

Create an owner-authorized Charter and begin an explicit whole-tree baseline pass:

witness charter init \
  -template minimal \
  -out charter.json

Before continuing, edit charter.json and replace its empty goals array with at least one owner-authorized goal, for example {"id":"preserve-reviewed-behavior","statement":"Preserve the behavior intended for this reviewed change."}.

witness pass begin \
  -state-dir ../witness-state \
  -charter charter.json \
  -source-dir . \
  -integration-bundle /absolute/path/to/relay-integration-bundle-v2.json \
  -baseline-pass \
  -allow-dirty-source

The state directory must be outside the reviewed source tree; charter.json is an owner input in that tree, so this example also records its deliberate uncommitted state.

pass begin and pass resume emit a machine-readable next-action document. The caller supplies the requested finder or relay artifacts, then resumes the same state directory:

witness pass resume -state-dir ../witness-state

The lower-level workflow remains available for callers that need direct control:

1. witness charter freeze
2. witness verification preflight
3. Produce defect, economy, and optional goal-fit role-output documents.
4. witness verification plan
5. Run the required relay verification batches and retain their exports.
6. witness verification assemble
7. witness adjudicate
8. Inspect the adjudication result, ledger, pending verification, and Operational Envelope questions. Owner decisions use witness ledger promote or witness ledger accept-unverified.

See skill/SKILL.md for the complete orchestration procedure.

Operator walkthrough

For the copy-pasteable pass flow—from an owner-authored Charter through finder output, adjudication, ledger, and a zero-findings result—see docs/operator-walkthrough.md.

Security and trust model

witness-harness is an evidence producer, not a security sandbox. It launches caller-selected structured argument vectors with the current user's authority. It does not provide network isolation, container isolation, or a boundary against another process running as the same user. Run only commands and input documents you trust.

Harness receipts contain the supplied environment map and captured artifacts. Do not place credentials or other secrets in that map. On shared systems, use a private state/output directory and a restrictive umask such as umask 077. Protect the HMAC key used for execution receipts separately from the receipts it authenticates.

Read SECURITY.md before using Witness with sensitive source or on a multi-user machine.

Development

The repository has no third-party Go module dependencies. Run the local gate before submitting a change:

gofmt -w cmd internal testdata/e2e
go build ./...
go vet ./...
go test ./... -count=1

Additional contribution guidance is in CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

Witness is licensed under the MIT License.