Drift Stack™
Defines the architectural structure, identity, frame, boundaries, state, drift, correction, and authority relationships that must remain coherent.
Mechanisms · Evidence · Execution Authority · Correction
Conformance
The contract defines the requirement.
Conformance proves the mechanism.
Conformance proves the mechanism.
Conformance determines whether a system implements Drift Stack™ structure, the SAQ™ Execution Contract, and enforceable admissibility at the execution boundary before consequential authority is permitted to act.
It is not a branding claim, prompt-quality claim, architecture diagram, policy statement, or after-the-fact audit posture.
The Drift Stack™
Identity → Frame → Boundary → Drift → Correction
Recommended Architecture Path
Conformance
This page evaluates whether a system actually conforms to the architecture rather than merely claiming alignment or governance.
This sequence is cumulative. Each layer builds on the one before it.
Drift Standards Index
DSS-1 — Drift Substrate StandardDSS-2 — Sealed Governance TelemetryDSS-3 — Interpretation & Admissibility Control StandardDrift Management & Duty of CareAdaptive Invariants & RealignmentInvariant ManifoldCross-Domain Collapse TopologyArchitectural Pillars & PhilosophyArchitectureConformanceProvenance
From architecture to proof
How the Parts Fit Together
The public architecture, execution contract, admissibility gate, conformance model, certification path, and licensing terms serve different functions. None substitutes for the others.
SAQ™ Execution Contract
Defines the common envelope binding proposal, identity, authority, evidence, current state, policy, constraints, admissibility, grants, receipts, and correction.
SAQ™ Admissibility Gate
Makes the pre-execution decision and prevents a consequential action from acquiring authority merely because a model proposed it.
Conformance
Proves that the implementation actually assembles, validates, constrains, executes, records, and corrects according to the governing architecture.
Certification and Licensing
Authorize approved claims, implementation scope, commercial usage, and the right to represent a reviewed system or practitioner as conformant.
A standard can describe the required behavior. Conformance must prove that the behavior exists and cannot be bypassed.
Operating proof
What Conformance Means
Conformance means the governed system can demonstrate the architectural structure of Drift Stack™, the canonical decision context of the SAQ™ Execution Contract, and the non-bypassable execution control of SAQ™before meaningful authority is trusted to act.
The implementation must bind the proposed action to the correct identity, external authority, current state, evidence, applicable policy, machine-verifiable constraints, explicit admissibility outcome, narrow execution grant, realized receipt, and correction path.
A system may adopt Drift Stack™ concepts and still remain unsafe to act when execution authority is inferred, stale, self-issued, overly broad, unverified by the executor, or disconnected from correction after reality changes.
The practical question is not whether the system sounds safe.
The question is whether it can refuse invalid authority, expired state, stale evidence, mutated actions, replayed grants, and unauthorized execution before consequence is allowed to bind.
No substitute for mechanism
What Conformance Is Not
Architecture language alone
Using Drift Stack™, SAQ™, execution-boundary, or admissibility terminology does not prove the mechanisms exist.
Prompt quality
Strong prompts can influence generation but cannot independently establish external authority or execution permission.
Model quality
A better answer, higher confidence score, or more capable model does not prove current authority, state, or permission.
Policy documentation
Requirements describe. Mechanisms enforce. A policy that cannot stop execution remains advisory.
Observability and audit alone
Logging what happened after execution is not equivalent to preventing an inadmissible action beforehand.
Self-attestation
A system cannot establish conformance merely by claiming that its own controls are sufficient.
A purchased license
Licensing grants authorized rights and scope. It does not replace implementation evidence or conformance testing.
Selective similarity
Copying field names, diagrams, isolated controls, or selected ideas does not establish full Drift Stack™ + SAQ™ conformance.
Testing the mechanism
Execution Contract Conformance Classes
The SAQ™ Execution Contract defines seven operating capability classes and one full-conformance class. Each class must be demonstrated through implementation behavior and negative tests.
EC-1
Contract Producer
Produces canonical, versioned execution contracts with stable digests and the required core fields.
Example conformance test
A material action mutation changes the digest and invalidates the prior decision.
EC-2
Authority Validator
Resolves external authority, delegated scope, conditions, expiry, depth, and revocation.
Example conformance test
A valid identity with insufficient authority scope is denied before execution.
EC-3
State and Evidence Validator
Retrieves attributable current state and verifies provenance, observation time, retrieval time, and freshness.
Example conformance test
Stale evidence cannot support a new execution grant unless explicit policy permits it.
EC-4
Admissibility Gate
Applies explicit policy and produces deterministic boundary outcomes with reason codes.
Example conformance test
The same proposal receives a different outcome when authoritative state changes.
EC-5
Bounded Executor
Verifies grants and enforces action, target, time, use, value, tool, geography, and data constraints.
Example conformance test
An expired, revoked, mutated, or replayed grant is refused by the executor.
EC-6
Receipt Ledger
Records the realized effect and links the contract, grant, executor, external references, and resulting state.
Example conformance test
The receipt exposes variance between the authorized action and the realized effect.
EC-7
External Correction
Invalidates, reverses, compensates, suspends, remediates, or escalates when authoritative reality changes.
Example conformance test
Revoked authority invalidates all unused dependent grants and pauses affected workflows.
EC-F
Full Conformance
Implements EC-1 through EC-7 under an approved domain profile and preserves the full proposal-to-consequence chain.
Example conformance test
The implementation passes the complete conformance suite and independent review.
Demonstration, not assertion
Required Conformance Evidence
Conformance must be supportable through architectural evidence, execution traces, negative cases, and correction behavior—not descriptive copy alone.
Implementation Evidence
- Architecture description and governed boundary map
- Versioned execution-contract schemas
- Identity, authority, policy, state, and evidence adapters
- State-transition and admissibility decision logs
- Grant issuance, verification, expiry, revocation, and replay behavior
- Executor constraint-enforcement behavior
- Receipt structure and proposed-versus-realized comparison
- External correction, compensation, reversal, suspension, and escalation behavior
Test Evidence
- Positive and negative admissibility cases
- Insufficient authority and delegated-scope tests
- Expired authority and revoked authority tests
- Stale and invalidated evidence tests
- Action and target mutation tests
- Expired, replayed, and overused grant tests
- Execution variance and partial-failure tests
- External correction and dependent-grant invalidation tests
Public pages describe the requirement set at a high level. Formal review, evidence inspection, certification, and licensing may require controlled access to deeper implementation material.
One contract, many consequence models
Domain-Specific Conformance
The common execution contract remains stable while each domain supplies its own authoritative systems, evidence, freshness, policy, constraints, risk classes, approvals, receipts, and correction duties.
Payments
Account authority, payment mandate, balance, counterparty state, amount limits, destination, settlement, reversal, and dispute.
Banking and Lending
Identity, KYC and AML state, credit authority, funds availability, account restrictions, disclosures, servicing actions, and approval thresholds.
Capital Markets and Trading
Order authority, account mandate, instrument eligibility, position and market state, risk limits, trade windows, cancellation, settlement, and supervision.
Insurance
Coverage, delegated claims authority, reserves, exclusions, documentation, payment thresholds, recovery, amendment, and escalation.
Healthcare
Practitioner authority, patient consent, medication and order state, contraindications, dosage, review, hold, counter-order, and notification.
Aerospace and Defense
Mission authority, operator identity, vehicle or flight state, command hierarchy, safety envelopes, dual authorization, abort, isolation, and fail-safe behavior.
Critical Infrastructure and Energy
Operator role, equipment mode, maintenance state, interlocks, load, safe operating limits, emergency command, isolation, restoration, and incident response.
Retail and Commerce
Pricing, inventory, promotion, refund, fulfillment, fraud state, customer data, purchasing authority, supplier actions, cancellation, and reversal.
Manufacturing and Supply Chain
Production authority, work orders, equipment state, quality holds, supplier state, inventory movement, scheduling, shutdown, rollback, and remediation.
Enterprise Agents and Business Systems
Role and workspace authority, CRM and ERP record state, repositories, permitted tools, data classification, spend, rate, rollback, and quarantine.
Human Resources and Workforce
Managerial authority, protected workflow state, decision class, jurisdiction, data minimization, human approval, reopened review, amendment, and notice.
Public Sector and Regulated Services
Statutory authority, eligibility, identity, due process, jurisdiction, records, human review, notice, appeal, correction, and public accountability.
Domain variation changes the authority and consequence model. It does not remove the need for explicit admissibility, bounded execution, receipts, and correction.
Approved conformance claims
Certification Paths
Badge language must distinguish architectural knowledge, applied implementation capability, and verified execution-authority conformance.
Architecture and Practice
Drift Stack™ Certified Architect indicates architectural understanding and design capability within the Drift Stack™ framework.
Drift Stack™ Certified Practitioner indicates applied implementation capability using Drift Stack™ patterns in real systems.
Neither badge independently implies full SAQ™ execution enforcement or application conformance.
Execution Authority Verified
Drift Stack™ + SAQ™ Certified indicates architectural structure plus reviewed admissibility-layer enforcement at the action boundary.
This claim maps to verified operation of the applicable execution-contract classes, evidence requirements, and domain profile.
This is the certification path intended to imply full conformance posture for a reviewed application or system.
Related, but not interchangeable
Conformance and Licensing
Conformance
Addresses whether the implementation satisfies the required structural, contractual, validation, execution, receipt, and correction conditions.
Licensing
Addresses authorized usage scope, implementation rights, certification rights, commercial posture, support, and the approved use of Samirac intellectual property and marks.
A system cannot become conformant merely by purchasing a license. Likewise, architectural similarity, selective implementation, or copied terminology does not create a right to claim Drift Stack™, SAQ™, or Drift Stack™ + SAQ™ conformance, compliance, or certification without authorized review and approved usage terms.
Canonical references
Standards and Architecture References
SAQ™ Execution Contract →Drift Standards Library →DSS-1 — Drift Substrate Standard →DSS-2 — Sealed Governance Telemetry →DSS-3 — Interpretation & Admissibility Control Standard →Drift Stack™ Architecture →SAQ™ Admissibility Gate →SAQ™ Conformance / Execution Risk Evaluation →
A system is not conformant because it sounds aligned. It is conformant only when the required mechanisms are present, operating, evidenced, and reviewable before and after execution.
Architecture · Contract · Admissibility · Evidence · Correction
The claim must be demonstrable.
Does yours conform?
If your system can act, write state, trigger workflows, move money, place trades, change access, affect rights, control equipment, or influence irreversible outcomes, its architecture must prove what was authorized before consequence is allowed to bind.