AIREP: A Protocol for Per-Decision Evidence in AI Runtime Governance

A protocol is presented for recording the governance decisions of automated AI runtimes. When a runtime releases, blocks, defers, redacts, or escalates an individual output, AIREP records that decision as a single signed object that any party can check offline, independent of the runtime that produced it. A record carries the decision as one of a closed set of verbs under a stated policy basis, references its input, output, and evidence by hash rather than by value, and declares both what its evidence covers and what it does not. Records form a SHA-256 hash chain that binds each record to its position, so that tampering and gaps are detectable by recomputation. Vendor-, model-, and domain-specific content is confined to a single optional namespace, and a mechanical neutrality test keeps the shared format free of it. A reference implementation and a two-language conformance kit are described. Some implementation issues are considered, and problems such as alignment of the canonical form across implementations, freshness witnesses, and multi-runtime chains are exposed. The format is offered for adoption by any AI runtime that records governance decisions.