Curbpack White Paper

Local evidence preparation for human review — runtime model, capability matrix, curb outlines / pathway, trust catalog, non-claims.

Curbpack checks your repository against local rule packs and writes a review pack you can hand to a buyer or auditor—on your machine, without claiming certification.

Not conformity assessment. Not CE marking. Not a notified-body opinion.

Public site: ri-se.github.io/curbpack (optional mirror: afelin.github.io/curbpack). Pin @v0.5.2.

Source markdown on GitHub · Voice: docs/voice-and-terms.md

1. Problem

Software suppliers must show documentation and dependency hygiene against house rules or regulatory-shaped checklists. Spreadsheets drift. Cloud governance-risk-compliance (GRC) platforms move source of truth off the machine and blur who decided what.

Teams need a local habit: check the tree, write evidence humans can hand to a buyer or auditor, and keep judgment with people—not a certificate of conformity.

2. Position

Curbpack is a local-first command-line interface (CLI). It evaluates rule packs (JSON rule sets) against a git repository, emits machine- and human-readable findings, and can bind a reproducible state digest into Git Notes.

• Packs are data (checklists shaped like regulatory annex drafts—not law).
• Default cold start is house-policy. Cyber Resilience Act (CRA)–shaped packs are opt-in only.
• Humans retain judgment; gate pass means gates passed on this tree for human review.
• RISE funds and hosts credibility surfaces; it does not certify products that use Curbpack gate results.

3. Runtime model and evidence flow

Pack JSON → Validate engine → GateFailure IR (JSON + markdown)
                                    ↓
                         Review pack / evidence + optional attest

The engine is industry-agnostic. Packs are data. No remote policy service is required for daily check. The MCP example shells out to CLI; optional Unix sock sidecar lives under examples/mcp/cmd/curbpack-sock (not in the main binary).

End-to-end flow

flowchart LR
  install[Install] --> init[Init]
  init --> choosePath[ChoosePath]
  choosePath --> writePath[WritePath]
  choosePath --> bringPath[BringPath]
  choosePath --> ciPath[CIPath]
  writePath --> outlines[CurbOutlines]
  outlines --> confirmPacks[ConfirmPacks]
  confirmPacks --> localMap[LocalPackRuleMap]
  localMap --> drafts[DualDraftsCiteCheck]
  drafts --> check[LocalCheck]
  bringPath --> check
  ciPath --> check
  check --> reviewPack[ReviewPack]
  reviewPack --> humanReview[HumanReview]
  humanReview --> attest[OptionalAttest]
  attest --> proofVerify[ProofVerify]
      

Write path: curb outlines → human confirm-packs → local pack→rule map → optional dual drafts + cite-check → check.
Bring and CI: skip outlines; go straight to check.
After green: review pack → human review → optional attest → local proof verify.

4. Three ways in and curb outlines

Every path ends in the same local check. Optional drafts never replace check.

Curb outlines (your pathway sketch) are a soft sketch of what you are curbing—not pack gates, not regulation, and not the law. The CLI alone writes the pathway seed. Seed and research packets are not check inputs. Humans stamp confirms (TTY, --i-am-human, or CURBPACK_ALLOW_CONFIRM=1). Agents never forge ticks or invent pack ids.

Local pack→rule map

After human confirm-packs, Curbpack builds a local pack→rule map (closed-world suggest → confirm → local map → drafts). Use it to navigate house drafting; it is not regulation text and does not replace check. Optional refresh: curbpack packs export-graph.

Mnemonic: Curb outlines → packs → check → hand off.

5. Capability matrix

6. Feature surface (shipped)

Exit codes: 0 pass · 1 gates/error · 2 usage/env. Optional thin MCP wraps the CLI; no confirm/attest tools.

7. Worked example

1. Curb outlines (Write) — pathway status → suggest → human confirm-packs → optional research → dual drafts + Recommended A|B → cite-check → human confirm-prose.
2. Red findings — e.g. missing SECURITY.md, forbidden claim-adjacent wording. curbpack check exits non-zero.
3. Remediate — optionally check --heal for stubs; ask … --propose for hints.
4. Re-check — gates passed on this tree (exit 0). Local gate score is not certification.
5. Review pack — curbpack share writes layered reports and a buyer one-pager; human confirm-share when reviewing handoff.
6. Optional attest — human attest. Until ssh-agent signed: UNSIGNED — not cryptographically verified. Then open proof/index.html.

Bring and CI skip step 1. Teaching sample: samples/onepager.html.

8. Evidence catalog and trust levels

Unsigned ≠ verified. Green readiness % is a local gate score on this tree, not a certification score. Daily check does not generate or open the one-pager.

9. Attestation and install integrity

State hash seed: commit|parent|sbom_digest|vex_digest (no wall-clock in the hash).

Synthetic agent-bind: tokens are never accepted as verified signatures. Install paths (install.sh, install.ps1, GitHub Action) verify release checksums.txt with sha256 and fail closed on mismatch. Network pack updates require a sha256 pin; offline import is preferred. curbpack doctor --repair re-asserts PATH + alias locally — it does not download or auto-update.

10. Non-claims and RISE neutrality

Curbpack does not certify conformity or grant CE marking; does not replace notified bodies, auditors, or legal counsel; does not guarantee absence of vulnerabilities; does not claim that green gates equal market access.

Development supported by RISE Research Institutes of Sweden as an applied research / competence object. RISE does not certify products that use Curbpack gate results. Public Pages under RI-SE are a credibility home—not an endorsement of adopter products. Never claim “RISE-approved,” “NCSC-approved,” or agency-endorsed product claims.

11. Limitations

Pack coverage is only as good as pack authors; thin packs create false confidence. Regex and text checks are heuristics with size/time guards — not full program analysis. SBOM/VEX generation is best-effort from common Node lockfiles. Local CLI ships for darwin / linux / windows_amd64. GitHub Action runners are Linux/macOS only. Integrator sock sidecar is Unix-only under examples/mcp/. doctor --repair is local PATH/alias repair — not silent auto-update. Client-side hash-pointer verify does not imply remote notary services. Pathway suggest is closed-world; it does not invent regulation text or pack ids.

12. Glossary

13. Related surfaces

• Product narrative: ri-se.github.io/curbpack (optional mirror: afelin.github.io/curbpack)
• How it works: how it works · builders
• Adoption clarity: docs/intent-vs-scope.md
• Authorities / CISO: for authorities
• Security: security
• Pathway depth: docs/getting-started/pathway.md
• Install and commands: repository README

Technical paper only — no ops or GTM runbooks. Aligned with @v0.5.2.