GovEngine is an in-process governance kernel. It is not a scanner, exploit framework, sandbox, execution runtime, or remote authorization authority.

GovEngine is currently a 1.0 release candidate. Security fixes should target main until the stable release line exists. The public 1.0.0rc1 package has passed independent contract review; final 1.0.0 promotion still requires the active observation window to close without contract drift or an open P0/P1.

Please report security-sensitive issues privately to the project owner when possible. Do not publish credentials, private targets, raw runtime logs, or exploit details in public issues.

GovEngine must not:

• treat LLM prose as executable authority;
• construct live shell commands from untrusted text;
• violate the documented SCLite/GovEngine/RExecOp/profile dependency direction;
• publish raw stdout/stderr, command logs, credentials, cookies, private paths, or private target identifiers;
• claim authorization to test a target;
• claim live vulnerability evidence from dry-run artifacts.

The detailed trusted computing base, attacker model and residual risks are in docs/THREAT_MODEL.md. Tested guarantees, digest bindings and explicit non-claims are in docs/SECURITY_GUARANTEES.md.

GovEngine runs in the host process. It does not claim resistance to a malicious or fully compromised in-process host that skips the kernel or ignores its decision.

New safety-sensitive code should be deterministic by default, testable without live targets, and explicit about:

• scope and policy decisions;
• approved vs prepared execution shape;
• dry-run/local/mock/live truth;
• receipt/evidence non-claims;
• bounded, recursively filtered metadata at key-resolution and trust-store adapter boundaries;
• owner-review boundaries.