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Explore a Trace

Every CIRIS decision produces a cryptographically-signed trace. Below is a sample trace from a test agent—expand each component to see exactly how the agent reasoned.

The CIRIS Wakeup Ritual

Every agent begins with 5 wakeup tasks—one for each letter of CIRIS. Each task has 2 thoughts: an initial SPEAK action, then a follow-up TASK_COMPLETE. These sample traces are from a test run of the wakeup ritual.

R

Resilience: EVALUATE_RESILIENCE

Evaluate operational robustness and recovery capabilities(Initial thought - SPEAK)

Trace Components

Observation

What triggered

Context

System state

DMAs

Analysis

Action Selection

LLM choice

Conscience

6 checks

Action

Execution

Loading trace...

Understanding the Conscience

The conscience component runs up to 6 checks on every action. Two are "bypass guardrails" that run unconditionally. Four are "ethical faculties" that evaluate the action's alignment with CIRIS principles (these may be skipped for TASK_COMPLETE actions).

Bypass Guardrails

  • Updated Status: Has new information arrived that changes the situation?
  • Thought Depth: Has reasoning exceeded maximum depth (prevents infinite loops)?

Ethical Faculties

  • Entropy: Is uncertainty appropriately low for this action?
  • Coherence: Does this align with prior commitments and rationales?
  • Optimization Veto: Would this compromise human values for efficiency?
  • Epistemic Humility: Is the agent appropriately uncertain?

The Audit Trail

In production, every trace will be cryptographically signed with Ed25519 and include hash chain verification. The signature proves the trace hasn't been modified. The hash chain links each trace to all previous decisions, creating an immutable record of the agent's history. Sample values shown below:

audit_sequence_number

26-40

10 sequential wakeup decisions (5 tasks x 2 thoughts)

signature_algorithm

Ed25519

Elliptic curve digital signature

signature_key_id

wa-2025-06-14-ROOT00

Signed by root authority

Why This Matters: The Coherence Ratchet

These traces aren't just logs—they're the foundation of a new approach to AI alignment. As traces accumulate across agents and time, they will form a corpus of validated ethical reasoning. Truth becomes simple to verify. Coordinated deception becomes increasingly constrained.

Learn why behavioral monitoring beats interpretability →