03 / Decide / EMILIA Approver
When a person is required, show the whole change, not a vague “Approve?”
Approver shows the old and new destination, who is asking, and what will happen on a separate enrolled device.
Capture fresh exact-action human authority when the customer's mandate or policy requires it.
Claim boundary: The ceremony proves that a pinned enrolled key completed a response over the exact action data. It does not prove perception, comprehension, legal sufficiency, or honest pixels.
Identity starts the ceremony. It does not authorize the action.
Authentication establishes control of an enrolled credential. The Approver ceremony adds the exact action, the relying party’s challenge and profile, a fresh decision, and evidence that Gate can verify before execution.
MFA
Establishes control of an enrolled factor. It does not prove you authorized this specific action with these specific parameters. A session authenticated with MFA can still execute unauthorized actions.
Human-in-the-loop
Confirms a human clicked a button. Does not bind a named principal to the exact action context. The audit trail shows a confirmation happened, not who is accountable for what.
Accountable Signoff
An enrolled approver receives a relying-party-created presentation and makes a fresh decision. The response binds the action, the credential, the profile, and the challenge. Gate consumes an accepted ceremony once at the protected executor.
How it works
Four steps across the app and the enforcement boundary.
01
Lock
Gate resolves the action and presentation from the protected system, computes its CAID and authoritative digest, and signs the action reference, CAID, digest, policy, approver, and expiry into one challenge.
02
Decide
The app verifies the Action Lock, renders every material field and any revision changes, then binds the approver’s decision, passkey assertion, and supported app or device integrity evidence to the same request.
03
Consume
After the required quorum, Gate atomically consumes the accepted authority and freezes the intended executor key before any integrated system mutates state. An approval can be withdrawn before consumption, never after.
04
Reconcile
If the provider times out after invocation, the action becomes indeterminate and cannot be blindly retried. Only retained, authenticated provider evidence bound to the same operation, executor key, and Action Lock can resolve the outcome.
The approval does not disappear after the tap
The reference apps keep the exact decision and the downstream consequence connected without pretending that authorization proves execution.
Action Lock
A short fingerprint comes from the CAID of the complete authoritative action. The signed context also carries the action reference and digest, so a changed action is a new decision.
Revision-aware review
When material fields change, the prior approval is superseded. The app shows what was added, changed, or removed and requires a fresh ceremony for the new CAID.
Quorum and lifecycle
See approvals still required and distinguish authorized, consumed, indeterminate, executed, refused, withdrawn, expired, and cancelled states.
Decision passport
Export a bounded record of action identity, decision, quorum, and effect state. It carries evidence digests, not raw passkey or provider evidence.
Signoff methods
Open reference clients and SDKs capture the decision. The relying party still chooses the acceptable apps, keys, integrity services, and assurance floor.
The ceremony establishes that a pinned enrolled key completed a verified response over exact bytes. It does not prove perception, comprehension, legal sufficiency, or that a compromised device displayed honest pixels.
iOS reference app
A buildable SwiftUI client renders the exact-action presentation, CAID Action Lock, material changes, quorum, and consequence state; it uses a passkey and binds Apple App Attest evidence to the same ceremony. Public distribution remains release-gated.
Android reference app
A buildable Kotlin client renders the same Action Lock and lifecycle, then uses Credential Manager, a non-exportable Android Keystore key, and Google Play Integrity under server-pinned app identity. Public distribution remains release-gated.
Passkey ceremony
The Class-A signoff uses WebAuthn/passkeys with user presence and user verification. The mobile layer composes with this established primitive instead of inventing new cryptography.
Embeddable SDKs
Swift and Kotlin libraries let an organization embed the same ceremony into its own branded, self-hosted application while keeping its own trust roots and execution boundary.
Distinct-human quorum
A profile can require multiple enrolled approvers, initiator exclusion, ordering, and separate device-bound ceremonies over the same exact action before Gate permits execution.
When signoff is required
Policy defines when accountable signoff is required. These are the most common trigger surfaces.
Payment changes above threshold
Any modification to payment destination, routing, or amount that exceeds a policy-defined threshold requires a named human to sign off on the exact change before it commits.
Government benefit redirects
Disbursement target changes within benefits programs. The signoff binds the exact new destination, program, and amount to a named authorizing principal.
Agent destructive actions
AI agent actions classified as destructive or irreversible. The agent cannot proceed without a named human explicitly assuming responsibility for the specific action.
Privileged enterprise operations
Privilege escalation, access grants, configuration changes, and administrative overrides in enterprise environments. Each operation requires named accountability.
Why it matters
Different environments need accountable signoff for different reasons. The mechanism is the same; each organization decides what control or legal conclusion the evidence supports.
IGGovernment
Action-level evidence can show which enrolled approver completed the ceremony, over which exact action, under which pinned profile. The agency and its auditor decide what conclusion that record supports.
SOXTreasury
Named, action-bound signoff and distinct-human quorum can support segregation-of-duties control testing without claiming that a cryptographic record alone establishes compliance.
PAMEnterprise
At a fully mediated privileged-operation boundary, Gate can require an enrolled human decision before a configured administrative action executes.
AIAgent Execution
When an agent requests a protected operation, the app gives the accountable human a separate exact-action decision surface before Gate permits the integrated executor to proceed.