Governance Emission Contract

This article documents the provider-neutral governance emission contract introduced for the 1.1.0 - Observability, Outbox, and Governance Emission Providers milestone.

In this software project, ASI means Accountable Systems Infrastructure. AsiBackbone remains a governance spine for consequential software decision flow. It is not an AI model host, cloud governance platform, observability backend, SIEM product, streaming system, signing product, or provider SDK wrapper.

Purpose

The governance emission contract is the seam between Core governance artifacts, durable local audit/outbox persistence, and optional downstream providers.

Core governance artifacts
  -> GovernanceEmissionEnvelope
  -> IAsiBackboneGovernanceEmitter
  -> GovernanceEmissionResult
  -> durable outbox or optional provider adapter

The goal is to define the handoff shape before implementing concrete providers such as OpenTelemetry, Azure Monitor, Event Hubs, Purview, SIEM, file, database, or future integrations.

Core-neutral placement

The contract lives in AsiBackbone.Core under the provider-neutral emission language.

Core owns:

IAsiBackboneGovernanceEmitter
GovernanceEmissionEnvelope
GovernanceEmissionPayload
GovernanceEmissionResult
GovernanceEmissionStatus
GovernanceEmissionError
GovernanceEmissionEventType

Core does not own:

OpenTelemetry exporter configuration;
Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Event Hubs, or Purview SDK dependencies;
SIEM-specific payload formats;
provider-specific retry clients;
cloud workspace, subscription, tenant, resource group, namespace, topic, table, or catalog identifiers;
signing-provider implementation or key-management logic.

Provider packages and host-owned adapters depend on Core. Core must not depend on provider packages.

Contract roles

Type	Role
`IAsiBackboneGovernanceEmitter`	Provider-neutral async emission boundary. Durable outbox workers and provider adapters can target this interface.
`GovernanceEmissionEnvelope`	Versioned neutral envelope carrying event identity, correlation, audit residue ID, lifecycle stage, policy version/hash, trace fields, gateway/outbox hints, payload descriptor, and safe metadata.
`GovernanceEmissionPayload`	Minimized payload descriptor. It captures payload type, schema version, content type, content hash, size, and safe metadata without requiring raw protected content.
`GovernanceEmissionResult`	Provider-neutral result shape for delivered, pending, deferred, failed, retryable, and dead-letter outcomes.
`GovernanceEmissionStatus`	Stable status vocabulary for local/outbox/provider handoff.
`GovernanceEmissionError`	Provider-neutral error code, message, retryability, provider name, and safe provider error code.
`GovernanceEmissionEventType`	Stable event category vocabulary for decision, acknowledgment, capability token, gateway, audit residue, lifecycle, outbox, and provider emission events.

Envelope guidance

GovernanceEmissionEnvelope should be treated as a minimized transport contract, not as the authoritative audit store.

The envelope can carry:

EnvelopeId
SchemaVersion
EventType
EventId
OccurredUtc / CreatedUtc
CorrelationId
AuditResidueId
LifecycleStage / LifecycleStageSequence
PolicyVersion / PolicyHash
TraceId, SpanId, ParentSpanId
OperationName, Outcome, and opaque ActorId
EmitterStatus, EmitterProvider, and OutboxSequence
GatewayExecutionId and DecisionStage
optional minimized GovernanceEmissionPayload
provider-neutral metadata

Provider adapters may map these fields into backend-specific records, spans, logs, events, streams, or catalog metadata, but the neutral envelope should remain backend-independent.

Result and failure behavior

GovernanceEmissionResult supports these neutral outcomes:

Status	Meaning	Typical next step
`Pending`	Accepted locally or staged for future emission.	Persist or continue outbox processing.
`Delivered`	Emission succeeded.	Record provider-side identifier when available.
`Deferred`	Emission intentionally delayed.	Retry after a host-defined delay or review.
`Failed`	Emission failed and retryability is not implied by status.	Apply host policy.
`RetryableFailure`	Failure is expected to be retryable.	Retry with backoff and failure counters.
`DeadLettered`	Terminal failure or policy quarantine.	Stop automatic retry and preserve diagnostics.

Provider-specific exception types, HTTP codes, SDK error objects, and backend payloads should be normalized into GovernanceEmissionError before crossing the Core boundary.

Issue	Relationship
#140 Durable outbox	The outbox can store `GovernanceEmissionEnvelope` values and hand them to `IAsiBackboneGovernanceEmitter` when ready.
#141 Lifecycle stages	`GovernanceEmissionEnvelope` can carry `AuditResidueLifecycleStage` and stable stage sequence values.
#142 Audit residue telemetry	`GovernanceEmissionEnvelope.FromResidue` copies neutral telemetry, trace, outbox, gateway, and policy fields from audit residue.
#144 OpenTelemetry provider	The OpenTelemetry provider should adapt this contract into spans, events, logs, metrics, and attributes without changing Core semantics.
#145 Event Hubs provider	The Event Hubs provider should adapt this contract into versioned stream messages with stable message properties, outbox-safe retry behavior, and no Core Azure dependency.
#146 Purview enrichment	Purview enrichment should consume minimized envelopes or summaries as optional catalog, classification, lineage, and compliance context without becoming the raw audit store.
#147 Signing-ready receipts	Signing-ready metadata can be carried by audit receipts and downstream emissions without requiring Core to depend on a concrete signing provider.
#149 Observability architecture docs	This contract is the first implementation seam described by the observability and governance emission architecture direction.

Privacy and minimization rules

Emission envelopes should not contain:

raw capability tokens;
secrets, connection strings, API keys, or credentials;
raw prompts, documents, payload bodies, protected records, or sensitive content;
raw personal data unless host policy explicitly permits it;
provider workspace secrets or deployment topology details;
unredacted DLP/classification failure payloads.

Use opaque IDs, hashes, coarse policy scopes, controlled stage/status values, and minimized metadata. When provider emission is blocked by DLP or classification policy, preserve the local governance record and return or persist a provider-neutral failure result.

Provider implementation sequence

Recommended implementation sequence:

Core defines this neutral contract.
Durable outbox stores envelopes and status/result state.
Optional providers adapt envelopes into backend-specific payloads.
Provider failures normalize back into GovernanceEmissionResult and GovernanceEmissionError.
Host policy decides retry, defer, quarantine, dead-letter, or escalation behavior.

This keeps AsiBackbone from starting at a vendor provider and working backward into Core.

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