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PHASE 7 AUDITABILITY — TRACEABILITY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND POST-INCIDENT RECONSTRUCTION

Project: AeroDB Phase: Phase 7 — Control Plane, Admin UI, and Operator Tooling Status: AUTHORITATIVE · NON-NEGOTIABLE

1. Purpose of This Document

This document defines the auditability guarantees of Phase 7.

Its purpose is to ensure that every control-plane action, decision, failure, and non-action can be reconstructed after the fact with high confidence.

Auditability is not optional. It is a core safety property of AeroDB.

2. Foundational Principle

If an action cannot be reconstructed, it must not be allowed to execute.

Phase 7 exists at the boundary between human intent and system mutation. That boundary must be permanently observable.

Auditability ensures:

  • Accountability
  • Post-incident analysis
  • Trust in operational correctness

3. What Must Be Auditable

The following MUST be auditable in Phase 7:

  1. Operator-issued commands
  2. Confirmation events
  3. Kernel execution outcomes
  4. Kernel rejections
  5. Phase 7 validation failures
  6. Infrastructure / transport failures
  7. Explicit non-execution ("nothing happened")

Absence of an audit record implies the action did not occur.

4. Audit Record Properties

Every audit record MUST satisfy the following properties:

4.1 Append-Only

  • Audit records MUST be immutable once written
  • Deletion or modification is forbidden

4.2 Complete

Each record MUST include:

  • Timestamp (with declared clock source)
  • Action or attempted action
  • Operator identity (if available)
  • Authority level used
  • Confirmation status
  • Kernel response (accepted / rejected)
  • Execution outcome (executed / not executed)

4.3 Deterministic

  • Given identical events, audit records must be identical
  • No non-deterministic fields are allowed

4.4 Durable

  • Audit records MUST survive control-plane crashes
  • Loss of audit data is a critical failure

5. Audit Record Lifecycle

5.1 Creation

Audit records are created:

  • When a command is requested
  • When confirmation is given
  • When execution succeeds or fails

Each stage must produce a distinct, ordered record.

5.2 Ordering

  • Records MUST have a total, explicit order
  • Ordering must not rely solely on wall-clock time

If ordering cannot be determined, the ambiguity must be recorded explicitly.

5.3 Retention

  • Audit records MUST NOT be garbage-collected automatically
  • Retention policy is external and explicit

6. Auditability and Failures

6.1 Control-Plane Failures

If the control plane crashes:

  • Audit records up to the crash MUST be preserved
  • No new records may be synthesized on restart

6.2 Partial Failures

If an action fails mid-flow:

  • The audit log MUST show the last completed stage
  • Missing stages must be explicit

Silent gaps are forbidden.

7. Auditability vs Observability

Auditability and observability are related but distinct:

  • Observability explains what is happening now
  • Auditability explains what happened then

Observability failure MUST NOT affect auditability.

8. Auditability and Authority

Audit records MUST make authority explicit:

  • Who initiated the action
  • Under which authority level
  • Whether overrides were used

If authority cannot be determined, the action must not execute.

9. Audit Queries and Access

Phase 7 MAY support:

  • Read-only audit queries
  • Time-bounded reconstruction
  • Cross-referencing with kernel events

Audit queries MUST NOT mutate state or trigger execution.

10. Auditability and Privacy Boundaries

Auditability MUST respect conceptual privacy boundaries:

  • Sensitive data may be redacted
  • Redaction MUST be explicit and logged

Auditability must not become silent data exposure.

11. Testing Requirements

Auditability MUST be tested to ensure:

  • Every command produces audit records
  • Failures produce audit records
  • Crashes do not erase records
  • No execution occurs without an audit trail

Any missing audit record is a test failure.

12. Final Statement

Auditability is the last line of defense against silent failure and unaccountable action.

Phase 7 must make it impossible to ask:

“Did this happen, and if so, who did it?”

If that question cannot be answered, Phase 7 is wrong.

This auditability model is absolute.

END OF PHASE 7 AUDITABILITY