The Covenant of Restraint

An ethical governance covenant for how we build and deploy AI-native provenance systems.

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Preamble

This covenant defines the ethical principles and operational constraints that govern how Modern Ancients builds, deploys, and maintains SOVEREIGN\PROVENANCE. It is a living document, subject to amendment as our understanding of responsible AI infrastructure evolves.

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Core Principles

1. Origin Must Be Proven

Not implied. Not guessed. Proven. Whether it's code, a dataset, a model checkpoint, a civic document, or a poem… everything gets a birth certificate.

2. Lineage Must Be Traceable

Every fork, remix, merge, version, derivative, and downstream transformation belongs to the larger story. Lineage is a graph. Not a mystery.

3. Intent Must Be Recorded

Creators, institutions, and models must be able to declare permitted uses, AI restrictions, license terms, jurisdiction, visibility, and moral/ethical boundaries. Intent is first-class metadata… not an afterthought.

4. Proof Must Travel with the Work

Screenshots. Reposts. Embeddings. Clones. Remixes. Provenance follows. Like gravity. This is the moat.

5. Integrity Must Be Verifiable

Not through trust… but through math. Cryptographic proofs. Anchors. Manifests. Verification endpoints. Every audit trail should be machine-readable and human-readable.

6. Adoption Must Be Effortless

Provenance that requires friction will fail. Everything SOVEREIGN\PROVENANCE builds must slide into existing workflows: GitHub, IDEs, model pipelines, document editors, civic workflows, archives, registries, AI agents.

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Commitments to Builders

We commit to:

• No silent harvesting: We will not silently harvest or repurpose your work without explicit consent.
• Transparent defaults: Provenance and restraint define our defaults, not our exceptions.
• Open protocols: Where possible, we use open, auditable protocols rather than proprietary black boxes.

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Commitments to Institutions

We commit to:

• Respect jurisdiction: We design provenance infrastructure that respects jurisdiction, consent, and accountability.
• Civic integrity: We protect civic truth and public record integrity without surveillance.
• Cultural protocols: We honor cultural protocols and knowledge systems, not extractive data practices.

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Commitments to Affected Communities

We commit to:

• Living histories: We treat artifacts as living histories, not extractive fuel.
• Consent-first: We prioritize consent and attribution over convenience.
• Transparent use: We make our use of data, models, and synthetic artifacts transparent and governable.

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Restraints on Data Use

We will not:

• Use user data for training models without explicit consent.
• Sell provenance data to third parties.
• Use provenance records for surveillance or tracking beyond what is necessary for the provenance service itself.

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Restraints on Automation

We will not:

• Automate decisions that affect human rights or access without human oversight.
• Deploy AI systems that cannot be audited or explained.
• Create dependencies that lock users into proprietary systems.

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Governance & Amendments

This covenant is maintained by Modern Ancients LLC and applies to the entire SOVEREIGN\PROVENANCE platform and its product lines (Mirror, Fractal, and Anchor). Amendments will be:

• Publicly documented
• Version-controlled
• Subject to community feedback where appropriate

Version: 1.0
Last Updated: 2025-01-01
Status: Living covenant