@qmilab/lodestar-memory-firewall

Lifecycle gates for claims and beliefs — four orthogonal axes (truth, retrieval, security, freshness) with per-axis transition rules. Part of Lodestar — the trust layer for AI agents.

The Memory Firewall is the gate between "an agent extracted something" and "the agent has adopted this as a belief it will act on." It is the answer to memory poisoning: agent-written memories cannot promote themselves.

Install

npm install @qmilab/lodestar-memory-firewall
# or
bun add @qmilab/lodestar-memory-firewall

The four lifecycle axes

A belief moves independently on four axes. Promoting on one does not promote on another.

| Axis | States | | --- | --- | | truth_status | unverified → supported → contradicted | | retrieval_status | normal ↔ restricted ↔ hidden | | security_status | clean ↔ quarantined (one-way without explicit clearance) | | freshness_status | fresh → stale → expired |

The orthogonality is deliberate. A belief can be supported but stale, or clean but unverified, or quarantined but otherwise truthful. Collapsing the axes into a single enum throws away the information that makes informed retrieval possible.

Usage

import {
  MemoryFirewall,
  GatedRetrieval,
  InMemoryClaimStore,
  InMemoryBeliefStore,
  InMemoryEvidenceStore,
} from "@qmilab/lodestar-memory-firewall"

const claims = new InMemoryClaimStore()
const beliefs = new InMemoryBeliefStore()
const evidence = new InMemoryEvidenceStore()

const firewall = new MemoryFirewall(claims, beliefs, evidence, async (event) => {
  // route firewall audit events to your event log
})

// Promote one axis of an existing belief. The authority is what gives
// the firewall permission to make the transition; user_confirmation
// is one of the few authorities allowed to lift truth_status.
await firewall.transitionAxis({
  belief_id: belief.id,
  axis: "truth_status",
  to_value: "supported",
  by_authority: "user_confirmation",
  reason: "user confirmed in chat",
})

// Retrieval goes through the gate. It returns four buckets — what
// was accepted, what was rejected (and why), uncertainties surfaced
// per policy, and contradictions if the policy allows.
const retrieval = new GatedRetrieval(beliefs)
const result = await retrieval.retrieve(
  { scope: { level: "project", identifier: "my-project" } },
  contextPolicy,
)
// result.accepted, result.rejected, result.contradictions, result.uncertainties

Invariants

1. No self-promotion. An agent's own success does not promote a belief from unverified to supported, or from restricted to normal. Promotion needs user confirmation, probe verification, or a narrow auto-promotion policy with logged evidence.
2. Auto-observation gate. external_document and model_inference evidence cannot promote a claim to truth_status: supported automatically — only human or verifier-grade evidence can.
3. Quarantine is one-way. A belief that enters security_status: quarantined does not return to clean without an explicit clearance event from an authorised actor.
4. Retrieval respects ContextPolicy. No retrieval path silently bypasses the policy.
5. Every transition produces an audit event. No silent state mutation — the audit sink passed to the constructor receives a structured event for every accepted claim, adopted belief, and axis transition.

License

Apache 2.0.