Traceability
Traceability is the unbroken chain from what was asked to what shipped. For AI-generated code that chain normally breaks the moment the agent session ends — the prompt is gone, and the diff is all that’s left. Provasign keeps the chain intact.
The chain
User prompt
│ captured verbatim
▼
Intent YAML (.provasign/intents/INT-….yaml)
│ prompt_hash · agent · model · acceptance criteria
▼
ChangeSet (the diff the agent produced)
│ Grove ICR: which symbols, which blast radius
▼
Certificate (Ed25519-signed: changeset · config · toolchain · results)
│
▼
Admitted commit
trailers: Intent-ID · Intent-Hash · Certificate-ID · ICR-Hash · Signed-By
Every link is addressable. From a commit you can reach its certificate and its intent; from an intent you can find the prompt that created it; from the certificate you can replay the gates.
What each artifact pins down
| Artifact | Answers |
|---|---|
| Intent YAML | What was asked? verbatim prompt, who/what produced it, acceptance criteria |
Intent-Hash |
Was the recorded prompt tampered with? |
| ICR (from Grove) | What did it actually change? symbols + blast radius |
| Certificate | What verified it? gates, config, toolchain, results — signed |
| Commit trailers | Where does it all hang together? stable, parseable links on the commit |
Identity granularity
The intent records the agent and model that produced the change (e.g. claude-opus-4-8). Recording precise, version-pinned model identity — distinguishing, say, two Opus versions or a different vendor’s model — is what makes the chain useful for later analysis; capture it as vendor/family-version at intent-open time.
This is the artifact the EU AI Act expects for high-risk activities: a record of what the AI was asked to do, what checked the output, and a proof you can show an auditor.