Map every governance control to a CI/CD stage. Sign the receipt. Hand the auditor a bundle.

The pipeline, end to end

Three lifecycle stages — Design, Deployment, Operations — sit on top of four shared planes: the Evidence Plane (signed receipts), the Policy Plane (OPA + gate YAML), the Lineage Plane (OpenLineage graph), and the Trust Plane (KMS, OIDC, transparency log).

flowchart TB
    classDef design fill:#e6f3f4,stroke:#01696f,color:#01314c,stroke-width:1.5px
    classDef deploy fill:#fef6e0,stroke:#b87b00,color:#4a3000,stroke-width:1.5px
    classDef ops fill:#e8f5ea,stroke:#2ecc71,color:#0d3d1a,stroke-width:1.5px
    classDef plane fill:#01314c,stroke:#01696f,color:#fff,stroke-width:1.5px

    subgraph DESIGN["DESIGN STAGE"]
      direction TB
      D1[Use-case intake
risk classification]
      D2[Data sheet +
model card draft]
      D3[Threat model
red-team plan]
      D4[Design review
signed approval]
      D1 --> D2 --> D3 --> D4
    end

    subgraph DEPLOY["DEPLOYMENT STAGE"]
      direction TB
      P1[Source commit
signed by dev]
      P2[Build + SBOM
SLSA provenance]
      P3[Eval suite
bias · safety · perf]
      P4[Policy gate
OPA / Conftest]
      P5[Signed release
cosign + attest]
      P6[Admission control
verify in cluster]
      P1 --> P2 --> P3 --> P4 --> P5 --> P6
    end

    subgraph OPS["OPERATIONS STAGE"]
      direction TB
      O1[Inference observed
OVERT receipt]
      O2[Drift + safety
monitors]
      O3[Incident detect
+ kill switch]
      O4[Continuous
re-evaluation]
      O1 --> O2 --> O3 --> O4 --> O1
    end

    DESIGN ==> DEPLOY ==> OPS

    subgraph PLANES["SHARED PLANES"]
      direction LR
      EV[(Evidence Plane
signed receipts
Merkle anchored)]
      PL[(Policy Plane
Rego · gate YAML
crosswalks)]
      LN[(Lineage Plane
OpenLineage
graph)]
      TR[(Trust Plane
KMS · OIDC
transparency log)]
    end

    DESIGN -.-> EV & PL & LN & TR
    DEPLOY -.-> EV & PL & LN & TR
    OPS -.-> EV & PL & LN & TR

    class D1,D2,D3,D4 design
    class P1,P2,P3,P4,P5,P6 deploy
    class O1,O2,O3,O4 ops
    class EV,PL,LN,TR plane
      

The shared evidence model

One envelope binds policy and engineering. Beacon receipts are OVERT 1.0 envelopes with the aigovops-beacon.v1 profile. Policy team writes controls that reference these fields; engineering writes SDKs that emit them. Same schema, two teams, zero translation overhead.

{
  "id": "01HXYZ8K3F2N5Q1R7S9V3W4Y6B",
  "ts_utc": "2026-05-23T18:04:22.318Z",
  "user": {
    "sub": "build-runner@github",
    "email": "actions@github.com",
    "oidc_issuer": "https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com"
  },
  "vendor": "anthropic",
  "model": "claude-sonnet-4-5",
  "version": "2026-04-01",
  "prompt_hash": "sha256:9f2c…",
  "result_hash": "sha256:7b1a…",
  "event_type": "gate.evaluated",
  "environment": "cloud_saas",
  "evidence_id": "01HXYZ8K3F2N5Q1R7S9V3W4Y6A",
  "parent_receipt_id": "01HXYZ8K3F2N5Q1R7S9V3W4Y69",
  "signature": {
    "alg": "Ed25519",
    "key_fpr": "SHA256:9p2x…",
    "sig_b64": "MEUCIQ…",
    "canonical_form": "json/c14n-rfc8785"
  }
}

{
  "profile": "aigovops-beacon.v1",
  "control_refs": [
    "nist-ai-rmf:MEASURE-2.7",
    "iso-42001:A.6.2.5",
    "eu-ai-act:Art.15"
  ],
  "subject": {
    "name": "ghcr.io/aigovops/foo:v1.2.3",
    "digest": {
      "sha256": "abc123…"
    }
  },
  "lineage": {
    "openlineage_run_id": "f3b1…",
    "parent_datasets": [
      "sha256:111…",
      "sha256:222…"
    ],
    "parent_models": [
      "sha256:333…"
    ]
  },
  "decision": {
    "result": "pass",
    "rules_evaluated": 47,
    "rules_failed": 0,
    "exception_id": null
  }
}

design.approved
  └─ build.completed
       └─ eval.completed
            └─ gate.evaluated (pass)
                 └─ bundle.signed
                      └─ admission.allowed
                           └─ inference.observed × N
                                └─ monitor.drift.detected
                                     └─ gate.evaluated (re-eval)

How technical & policy teams collaborate

Same repo. Same pull-request workflow. Same evidence model. Different files.

aigovops-beacon/
├── crosswalks/             # policy team owns
│   ├── nist-ai-rmf.yaml
│   ├── iso-42001.yaml
│   └── eu-ai-act.yaml
├── policies/               # joint ownership
│   ├── gates/              # YAML (policy team)
│   └── rego/               # Rego (eng team)
├── usecases/               # product owners
│   └── *.yaml
├── modelcards/             # ML team
├── datasheets/             # data team
├── attestations/           # generated, signed
└── .github/workflows/
    ├── design-review.yml
    ├── build-sign-attest.yml
    └── evidence-bundle.yml

The four collaboration rituals

Starter pipeline — drop-in GitHub Actions

A minimal but complete workflow you can paste into your repo to get to "signed evidence in CI" in under an hour. Full templates are in the artifacts folder.

# .github/workflows/govern.yml
name: AI governance pipeline
on: [push, pull_request]

permissions:
  contents: read
  id-token: write       # OIDC for keyless signing
  attestations: write
  packages: write

jobs:
  govern:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with: { fetch-depth: 0 }

      - name: Verify signed commits
        run: git verify-commit HEAD

      - name: Build + SBOM
        run: |
          docker build -t $IMG .
          syft $IMG -o cyclonedx-json > sbom.cdx.json

      - name: Run eval suite
        run: |
          python -m evals.run --suite safety,bias,perf \
            --out evals.json

      - name: Policy gate (Conftest + Beacon checklist)
        run: |
          conftest test policies/gates/ \
            --policy policies/rego/ \
            --data evals.json sbom.cdx.json
          aigovops-beacon checklist run \
            --pack crosswalks/nist-ai-rmf.yaml \
            --evidence . \
            --emit-receipt gate.evaluated

      - name: Sign image + attest
        env:
          COSIGN_EXPERIMENTAL: "1"
        run: |
          cosign sign $IMG
          cosign attest --predicate sbom.cdx.json \
            --type cyclonedx $IMG
          cosign attest --predicate evals.json \
            --type https://aigovops.org/eval/v1 $IMG

      - name: Emit + anchor evidence bundle
        run: |
          aigovops-beacon export \
            --window pr-$GITHUB_SHA \
            --out bundle.tar.gz
          aigovops-beacon anchor bundle.tar.gz \
            --transparency rekor

      - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: evidence-bundle
          path: bundle.tar.gz