MIDAS

Authority governance engine for autonomous decisions.

MIDAS determines whether an automated agent is within authority to perform a consequential action. Every evaluation produces exactly one outcome and one tamper-evident audit envelope — capturing what was requested, what authority was resolved, and why the outcome was reached.

Current release candidate: v1.1.0-rc.1 — intended for evaluation while MIDAS is under active development. The runtime governance contract (/v1/evaluate), envelope shape, audit-chain integrity, FailModePolicy resolution, and control-plane apply path are the stable surfaces; Explorer graph UI surfaces remain in active iteration. The v1.0.x tags are historical early releases.

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Product Preview

Explore the live MIDAS demo environment:

https://midas.accept.io/explorer

MIDAS includes a graph-native Explorer for visualising runtime governance, authority delegation, operational context, evidence, drift, and decision topology.

Authority Graph: governed decision surfaces, authority relationships, fail-mode visibility, and runtime governance topology.

Context Graph: operational relationships, evidence flow, governance signals, and runtime context topology.

Current platform status

MIDAS now provides a governed runtime path for evaluating agentic decisions through /v1/evaluate. The runtime persists operational envelopes, tamper-evident audit events, transactional outbox intent, and idempotency state in Postgres before returning governed success.

The repository includes the core evidence needed for controlled pilot and recoverable production evaluation: runtime metrics, class-aware failure semantics, audit_status on governed success, FailModePolicy governance, Prometheus alert rules, a Grafana dashboard, incident drill checklists, Docker/Postgres backup and restore verification, a p999-capable sustained-load harness, and Docker/Postgres outbox dispatcher validation.

This supports MIDAS readiness Level 1 and repository-level Level 2 evidence for a single-node Docker/Postgres recoverable-inline deployment shape, where authentication, persistent storage, monitoring, backup/restore, and operational ownership are in place.

MIDAS does not currently claim Bank Tier 1 inline readiness. It does not yet prove active-active resilience, RPO/RTO targets, multi-replica shared-Postgres scaling, production p999 SLOs, or payments-inline suitability. Higher readiness levels require additional deployment-specific validation.

See:

• Runtime Readiness Level Model
• Runtime readiness guide
• Performance guide
• Backup and restore guide
• Observability assets

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Explorer

Explorer is MIDAS’s graph-native visibility surface for runtime governance. It is intended to be used in governed environments to inspect authority, context, evidence, drift, and decision topology.

An interactive local sandbox is available at:

http://localhost:8080/explorer

Open it in a browser. Demo scenarios are pre-loaded and ready to run. Sign in with demo / demo in default local mode.

For production use, Explorer should be deployed only with appropriate authentication, configured data stores, intentional demo-data settings, and environment controls. Do not expose an unauthenticated local/demo Explorer instance publicly.

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Quick Start

Docker (recommended)

docker compose up --build

Then open http://localhost:8080/explorer and sign in with demo / demo.

No database required. MIDAS starts with an in-memory store and demo data pre-loaded.

Run without demo mode:

Bash/sh:

MIDAS_DEV_SEED_DEMO_DATA=false MIDAS_DEV_SEED_DEMO_USER=false docker compose up --build

PowerShell:

$env:MIDAS_DEV_SEED_DEMO_DATA="false"; $env:MIDAS_DEV_SEED_DEMO_USER="false"; docker compose up --build

These variables persist for the current shell session. Open a fresh shell (or unset the variables) to return to default demo behaviour.

When MIDAS_DEV_SEED_DEMO_DATA=true, MIDAS also seeds deterministic synthetic drift data by default so the Drift Overview is populated for demos. Set MIDAS_DEV_SEED_SYNTHETIC_DRIFT=false to suppress synthetic drift while keeping the structural demo data. Dev/demo-only; idempotent.

Run with Postgres: uncomment the postgres service and environment block in docker-compose.yml.

Go (no dependencies)

go run ./cmd/midas

Then open http://localhost:8080/explorer and sign in with demo / demo.

⚠️ Auth mode defaults to open for local development. Before exposing MIDAS to a network, set MIDAS_AUTH_MODE=required and configure MIDAS_AUTH_TOKENS. See Authentication.

First API evaluation

MIDAS v1 evaluates against explicitly declared structure. The default docker compose up --build flow seeds a complete demo chain (BusinessService → Process → Surface → Profile → Grant → Agent), so a fresh checkout can call /v1/evaluate immediately against a seeded surface. Below, we use the seeded Credit Assessment surface:

curl -s -X POST http://localhost:8080/v1/evaluate \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "surface_id":     "surf-v2-credit-assess",
    "process_id":     "proc-credit-assessment",
    "agent_id":       "agent-v2-evaluator",
    "confidence":     0.91,
    "consequence":    {"type": "risk_rating", "risk_rating": "low"},
    "context":        {"customer_id": "C-8821"},
    "request_id":     "req-demo-001",
    "request_source": "lending-service"
  }'

Expected response:

{"outcome":"accept","reason":"WITHIN_AUTHORITY","envelope_id":"...","explanation":"Request is within granted authority and may proceed.","policy_mode":"noop","audit_status":"recorded"}

Retrieve the full governance record:

curl http://localhost:8080/v1/decisions/request/req-demo-001?source=lending-service

For an end-to-end Postgres walkthrough including control-plane apply, surface approval, profile authoring, and grant binding, see docs/guides/quickstart-first-evaluation.md.

Authority Model

Authority flows in one direction:

DecisionSurface → AuthorityProfile → AuthorityGrant → Agent

Surface — what is governed (a business decision boundary). Carries name, domain, owner, required context keys. Does not carry thresholds.

Profile — how much authority is permitted on a surface. Carries confidence threshold, consequence limit, escalation mode, policy reference.

Grant — thin link from an agent to a profile. No governance semantics of its own.

Agent — any autonomous actor: AI model, automated service, or human operator.

See docs/core/authority-model.md.

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Integrity Guarantee

Every evaluation is atomic, deterministic, and produces a tamper-evident audit chain. The envelope — outcome, authority evidence, audit events — is written in a single database transaction. Either everything commits or nothing does.

Audit events are hash-chained in sequence. Each event's SHA-256 hash is derived from the previous event's hash. The final event hash is anchored in the envelope's Integrity section. If any event is modified, deleted, or inserted after the fact, the chain breaks at that point.

Verification requires only the stored event hashes and the anchored final hash on the envelope — not access to application secrets. See docs/core/envelope-integrity.md.

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Configuration

Database

Variable	Default	Description
MIDAS_STORE_BACKEND	memory	memory or postgres
MIDAS_DATABASE_URL	(none)	PostgreSQL connection string. Required when MIDAS_STORE_BACKEND=postgres.

The schema is applied automatically at startup (internal/store/postgres/schema.sql). No separate migration step is needed.

Authentication

Variable	Default	Description
MIDAS_AUTH_MODE	open	open (no auth, dev only) or required (bearer token enforced).
MIDAS_AUTH_TOKENS	(none)	Semicolon-separated entries: token|principal-id|role1,role2. Required when MIDAS_AUTH_MODE=required.

Generate tokens with openssl rand -base64 32, then:

export MIDAS_AUTH_TOKENS="<token>|svc:deploy|platform.operator;<token2>|user:alice|platform.admin,governance.approver"

Roles: platform.admin, platform.operator, platform.viewer, governance.approver, governance.reviewer.

MIDAS_AUTH_MODE	MIDAS_AUTH_TOKENS	Result
required	Set	Bearer token auth enforced
required	Unset	Fatal — no tokens configured
open	—	No auth — UNSAFE FOR PRODUCTION logged

Key environment variables

Variable	Default	Description
MIDAS_LOG_LEVEL	info	info or debug
MIDAS_EXPLORER_ENABLED	(auto)	true enables Explorer UI. Auto-enabled in memory mode.
MIDAS_DISPATCHER_ENABLED	false	true starts the Kafka outbox dispatcher
MIDAS_DISPATCHER_BATCH_SIZE	100	Outbox rows claimed per poll cycle and upper bound for topic-group publish/mark batches
MIDAS_DISPATCHER_POLL_INTERVAL	2s	Active runtime sleep between empty-queue poll cycles
MIDAS_DISPATCHER_MAX_BACKOFF	30s	Active runtime maximum backoff after consecutive poll errors
MIDAS_KAFKA_BROKERS	(none)	Comma-separated host:port. Required when dispatcher enabled.

Full variable reference: docs/operations/deployment.md.

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Documentation

Document	Contents
docs/getting-started.md	Prerequisites, install paths, memory-mode first evaluation
docs/guides/quickstart-first-evaluation.md	End-to-end Postgres walkthrough: midas init quickstart → Surface approval → Agent/Profile/Grant → Profile approval → /v1/evaluate
docs/explorer.md	Explorer sandbox: usage, endpoints, auth, envelope inspector
docs/control-plane.md	Apply, plan, surface lifecycle, versioning
docs/core/authority-model.md	Surfaces, profiles, grants, the authority chain
docs/core/runtime-evaluation.md	Evaluate endpoint, outcomes, idempotency, audit
docs/core/envelope-integrity.md	Envelope structure, hash chain, integrity verification
docs/core/data-model.md	PostgreSQL schema reference
docs/guides/lifecycle-management.md	Inferred structure lifecycle: promote and cleanup
docs/guides/authentication.md	Local IAM, OIDC/SSO, and API bearer token authentication
docs/guides/rego-policies.md	Policy behavior: NoOp default and future direction
docs/operations/runtime-readiness.md	Operator runbook: pilot deployment, observability, incident response, benchmark interpretation, fail-mode guidance
docs/operations/deployment.md	Surface lifecycle, Postgres pool, runtime metrics, runtime safety
docs/operations/performance.md	Reference inline-evaluation benchmarks (direct + HTTP) and interpretation
docs/operations/escalations.md	Escalation outcomes, listing and resolving
docs/operations/events.md	Outbox, dispatcher, Kafka, event contracts
docs/operations/integrations.md	Kafka integration, SSO/OIDC
docs/api/http-api.md	Complete HTTP API reference
docs/architecture/architecture.md	Deep architecture overview

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License

Apache License 2.0