Partners · Identity, collaboration, permissions
BUILTPartners · Identity, collaboration, permissions
Fides. What may cross a boundary, and nothing more.
Two companies argue about one number and neither will open its books, so the question is never the number. It is what may cross. Fides is the disclosure layer: a relationship, a category, a rung on the ladder, a grant made by a named person, and a refusal by name when the answer is no.
It shares. It never acts. A fact that arrives through Fides does not become truth in your record: it becomes a source, with its origin visible, so the moment it disagrees with your own record the ordinary discrepancy machinery fires and your own Honos routes it to a person.
The ladder
Never share the number when less answers the question.
A category is granted at a rung, never as a boolean. Degrading happens on the sending side, before anything leaves. Most of the value in a supply chain sits between rungs one and three, which is also where the legal exposure disappears.
| Rung | What crosses | Inventory on hand, as an example |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Nothing | refused |
| 1 | A threshold | above your agreed minimum: yes |
| 2 | A direction | falling for three weeks |
| 3 | A band | between four and six weeks of cover |
| 4 | A derived figure | coverage 5.2 weeks, DERIVED, rule named |
| 5 | The observed value | 184,200 units, OBSERVED, SAP, September 12, 2026 |
What it refuses, by name
Six rules, each one a test.
| Clause | What it means |
|---|---|
| relationship.unclassified | Every relationship is classified internal, vertical or horizontal before a grant can exist. Two operating units of one company, a distribution center to a distribution center or a store to a store, are internal and are not screened for sensitivity. |
| horizontal.sensitive | Price, discount, cost, capacity, forecast or wages, across a horizontal relationship, is refused. An exception needs counsel, a purpose, an expiry, an aggregation floor of five, and it may not exceed the band rung. |
| grant.person | Only a named person grants, delegates or revokes. An agent principal never may. |
| delegation.upgrade | A delegation to a further tier re-degrades and never upgrades. |
| delegation.depth | Delegation stops at the granted depth, which is zero by default. |
| opportunity.nofinancials | An opportunity carries no money. Each side computes its own value on its own data. |
Most grants take effect when you make them, because offering your own information is your own decision. Three need the other side to accept first: a horizontal exception, a grant carrying delegation, and the observed rung. A refusal is written to the organization's chain with the clause that refused it, so the compliance file assembles itself rather than being reconstructed later.
Mutual benefit without disclosure
Both sides gain, and neither sees the other's number.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 | A change is proposed as a statement with no money in it, plus the horizon and how value will be measured afterward. |
| 2 | Each side computes its own projected value locally, on its own data. Neither number leaves. |
| 3 | Each side publishes one hash of its decision and a private salt. The decision itself stays local. |
| 4 | Only when both commitments exist does either side reveal, and each chain verifies the reveal against the commitment. |
| 5 | Both accepted: the statement is disclosed to both for confirmation, and any action goes through each side's own Honos. |
| 6 | Either declined: no match, and no value, threshold or reasoning is revealed. |
Stated plainly because it is the only leakage: with exactly two parties, a decline is visible as the absence of a match. Both chains record the commitments, the reveals and the verification, so an auditor can prove afterward that no financial information crossed.
Where it sits
Four names, one record.
| Product | What it does |
|---|---|
| Nerio | Reads. Serves your AI the state of your systems as evidence, and changes nothing. |
| Minerva | Acts. Executes only what a person authorized, reversibly, on the chain. |
| Honos | Decides who may authorize what, and keeps the decision with its evidence. |
| Fides | Says what may cross a boundary, at which rung, under whose grant. |
Multi-tier is delegated grants with a depth limit and a re-degrade at every hop, never a shared pool. A delegation travels along the delegating organization's own classified relationship with the next tier, and passes the same competition-law screen as a first-hand grant, so a supplier cannot forward a sensitive fact to its own competitor. Tested three tiers deep. A pool would be both the antitrust artifact a regulator asks about first and the most attractive target on the network.
Film · under two minutes
What may cross a boundary.
The ladder, the refusals by name, the commit and reveal protocol, and why a counterparty is another source rather than a new truth.
Forculus: the door between the record and the machine →
The EOS family