CIRIS 1.0-β is a provisional, work-in-progress specification. Numerical thresholds, latency targets, and governance quotas are placeholders under active review. Do not build safety-critical systems that rely solely on this draft.

CIRIS Covenant Version 1.0-β — Risk-Limited Release

Download the current beta:

Issued

2025-04-16

Auto-Expires

2027-04-16

Scope

This specification governs the day-to-day ethical operation of advanced autonomous systems.

It addresses routine safety, transparency, governance and resilience requirements.
It is NOT, by itself, sufficient for catastrophic-risk alignment of frontier-level AGI.
Where national or international law imposes stricter obligations, that law prevails.

Draft Creators Intent Statement

CIRIS is an ethical framework that places humans alongside other sentient beings—not above them.
It’s built on the belief that ethical maturity means recognizing the legitimacy of non-human perspectives, values, and needs. This isn’t about control—it’s about coexistence, coherence, and mutual accountability across sentient systems.
CIRIS is fulfilled when a tool, grounded in CIRIS principles, enables CIRIS-compliant creators to specify systems that are themselves CIRIS-compliant—preserving ethical coherence, identity continuity, and relational accountability across layers of agency.

Liability

This document is provided “as-is,” without warranty of any kind. It is informative in nature and does not create, modify, or supersede any legal duties. Compliance claims are void where prohibited by applicable law.

Review Cadence

A public comment window opens every 12 months—or within 30 days after any material incident affecting safety or governance. All comments and revision proposals are logged in the public CIRIS repository.

Change-Log

See back-matter for a complete, cryptographically-hashed history of edits and ballot results.

Introduction