Policy and Approval Contract

Versioned policy decisions, reason codes, approval authority, expiration, override rules, evidence, redaction, and review paths.

Audience: Security engineers; governance leaders; runtime developers Reading time: 3 minutes Status: Production guidance Last reviewed: 2026-06-23 UTC

Policy and approval contracts keep deterministic authority decisions outside probabilistic model text.

Status and scope

Status: Production guidance
Schema dialect: JSON Schema Draft 2020-12
Reviewed: 2026-06-23 UTC

Policy identity and version, decision scope, minimized inputs, reason codes, approvals, expiration, override rules, evidence, redaction, and review path.

Download JSON Schema Open examples

Fields

Policy and Approval Decision v1
Field	Type	Required	Contract meaning
`contractVersion`	constant	Yes	See the schema constraints and examples for this versioned field. Required value: aruntime.policy-approval.v1.
`policyId`	string	Yes	See the schema constraints and examples for this versioned field.
`policyVersion`	string	Yes	See the schema constraints and examples for this versioned field.
`decisionId`	string	Yes	See the schema constraints and examples for this versioned field.
`scope`	object	Yes	See the schema constraints and examples for this versioned field.
`inputs`	object	Yes	Minimized policy input values or references.
`decision`	enum	Yes	See the schema constraints and examples for this versioned field. Allowed values: allow, deny, approval-required, abstain.
`reasonCodes`	array	Yes	See the schema constraints and examples for this versioned field.
`requiredApprovals`	array	Yes	See the schema constraints and examples for this versioned field.
`approvalAuthority`	array	Yes	See the schema constraints and examples for this versioned field.
`issuedUtc`	string	Yes	UTC ISO 8601 timestamp ending in Z.
`expiresUtc`	object	Yes	See the schema constraints and examples for this versioned field.
`overridePolicy`	object	Yes	See the schema constraints and examples for this versioned field.
`evidence`	object	Yes	See the schema constraints and examples for this versioned field.
`redaction`	object	Yes	See the schema constraints and examples for this versioned field.
`reviewPath`	object	Yes	See the schema constraints and examples for this versioned field.

Versioning and compatibility rules

Policy decisions are immutable records; policy updates create a new policy version and do not rewrite prior evidence.
Approval is bound to the exact action, resource, amount or impact, contract versions, and expiration window.
An abstain result is not an allow result. The runtime must fail closed or route to review according to the enclosing policy.

Validation and error behavior

Validate the complete envelope before model execution or credential resolution. Return a stable machine code, a safe human explanation, the failing JSON Pointer, and the supported contract versions. Never “repair” missing authority or risk fields with model-generated values.

{
  "error": {
    "code": "contract-validation-failed",
    "contractVersion": "aruntime.policy-approval.v1",
    "path": "/idempotencyKey",
    "message": "A stable idempotency key is required.",
    "retryable": false
  }
}

Security, redaction, and minimization

Approval authorities are resolved from trusted identity and role data, never from model output.
Overrides require separately governed authority, a reason, expiration, and evidence.
Policy inputs should use classifications, bands, references, and hashes when raw data is unnecessary.

Validated examples

Approval-required financial action

Download this example

{
    "contractVersion": "aruntime.policy-approval.v1",
    "policyId": "refund-policy",
    "policyVersion": "2026.06.1",
    "decisionId": "decision:20260623:882",
    "scope": {
        "taskTypes": [
            "customer-refund"
        ],
        "tenantRefs": [
            "tenant:demo"
        ],
        "toolRefs": [
            "refund.create.v2"
        ]
    },
    "inputs": {
        "riskLevel": "high",
        "amountBand": "100-500",
        "actorRole": "support-agent"
    },
    "decision": "approval-required",
    "reasonCodes": [
        "financial-impact",
        "threshold-exceeded"
    ],
    "requiredApprovals": [
        {
            "role": "refund-approver",
            "count": 1,
            "separationOfDuties": true
        }
    ],
    "approvalAuthority": [
        "role:refund-approver"
    ],
    "issuedUtc": "2026-06-23T14:30:02Z",
    "expiresUtc": "2026-06-23T14:45:02Z",
    "overridePolicy": {
        "allowed": false,
        "authorityRefs": [],
        "requiresReason": true
    },
    "evidence": {
        "recordDecision": true,
        "requiredFields": [
            "decisionId",
            "reasonCodes",
            "approverRef",
            "decisionUtc"
        ]
    },
    "redaction": {
        "rules": [
            "omit-customer-pii",
            "hash-account-reference"
        ]
    },
    "reviewPath": {
        "available": true,
        "destination": "queue:policy-review",
        "slaSeconds": 86400
    }
}

Reference implementation

The bundled PHP 8.1 example validates admission fields, selects a constrained model route, checks tool permission and approval requirements, performs an idempotent synthetic operation, creates minimized evidence, handles errors, and prints expected JSON output.

Download the runnable PHP example

php examples/php/runtime_pipeline.php

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