P · Prevention
Rules are walls, not sticky notes. What an agent may do is enforced in code paths and database constraints — it cannot act outside its charter, not “was asked not to.”
Most AI agents look busy. PACT proves they did the work.
PACT — Prevention · Assertion · Coverage · Trust — is the open standard for governed AI agents: actions prevented by construction, outcomes verified in the record, silence detectable per duty, and autonomy earned on evidence.
The disease: performed autonomy
Modern AI agents write beautiful plans, log cheerful “done!” messages, and fill dashboards with motion — whether or not anything real ships. We call this failure mode performed autonomy, and almost every agent deployment has it. The demos are stunning. The delivery is silent. Until now, no instrument existed to tell the difference.
The cure: three laws
A · Assertion
“Done” means it really happened. No work is complete until the substrate verifies the real outcome exists. Delivery is measured, never self-reported.
C · Coverage
Nothing gets quietly skipped. Every role’s job is a duty roster with triggers, outcomes, and SLAs — diffed against reality daily, so silence itself raises the alarm.
T · Trust
What the three laws earn: autonomy that is earned, bounded, revocable, and provable — every one of those words a database fact, not a promise.
The ladder
| Level | Name | The bar |
|---|---|---|
| PACT-1 | Logged | Every action recorded — input, output, cost, outcome |
| PACT-2 | Gated | Agents cannot act outside their charter; every artifact passes a validation gate |
| PACT-3 | Delivered + Covered | ”Done” = a verified outcome exists; coverage declared and diffed daily |
| PACT-4 | Earned | Autonomy granted per task on evidence, revoked on one breach; regulated actions pinned to humans forever |
The question to ask any agent vendor: “Is it PACT-4 — and can I see the probe log?”
Proven on its own failures
The standard wasn’t invented in a meeting. Its reference implementation was audited three times — and the findings are published: 2026-07-02 (architecture excellent, delivery flatlined), 2026-07-07 (real delivery, performed governance), 2026-07-13 (the first documented revival: FLATLINED → ALIVE, with the trace to prove it). Every rule in the standard was earned from a failure the instrument caught. Read the provenance →
Open, forever
The specification, the audit instrument, and the anti-pattern taxonomy are free under CC BY — for everyone, including competing implementers. The standard’s stewardship commitments — open-forever, an access tier for organizations serving the vulnerable, and permanent human sovereignty — are written into the standard itself as The Covenant.
The PACT Standard is authored by Scott Fielder, who also coined “performed autonomy” and built the standard’s reference implementation — then published its failed audits. PACT is a production standard implementing the OCMAS formalism on LLM substrates, stewarded by iii.partners, its first implementer. Open to all.