Governed tool call (EU AI Act Article 12 + 14)

Overview

Capability skills let an agent do things. This skill records what it was allowed to do, on what basis, and what it actually did, and inserts a human where the law requires one. It wraps the vaara package (no server needed):

• Article 14 (human oversight): a call can be escalated to a person who must

resolve it before the agent proceeds. The deployer can designate specific calls as always-escalate.

• Article 12 (record-keeping): every decision, escalation, resolution, and

outcome is appended to a tamper-evident, hash-chained audit trail that exports to a signed regulator package and verifies offline.

The decision is Vaara's, governed by thresholds the operator sets; this skill does not invent verdicts. Authenticity of the final package rests on the signing key and the optional RFC 3161 time anchor, not on this skill.

When to use

Use it before any tool call that is consequential, irreversible, or touches regulated data, especially alongside capability skills (for example clinical or genomic database skills). Do not use it for read-only, low-stakes calls; gate the actions a human would want to be able to stop.

Prerequisites

1. pip install vaara (the base install covers gate, escalate, record;

pip install 'vaara[attestation]' is only needed for some export options).

1. Pick two SQLite paths and reuse them across calls: one for the audit trail

(--audit-db), one for the review queue (--queue-db).

Protocol

Run scripts/governed_call.py for each governed action.

1. Gate the call, before executing it

python scripts/governed_call.py gate \
  --agent-id <agent> --tool <tool_name> \
  --params-json '{"...": "..."}' \
  --audit-db audit.db --queue-db queue.db \
  [--mode strict|balanced|eco|performance] [--require-review]

Read the JSON verdict and the exit code:

• `allow` (exit 0): execute the call, then go to step 3.
• `escalate` (exit 10): STOP. Do not execute. The call is queued for a

human. Surface the action_id to the user and wait. Proceed only after step 2 resolves it allow.

• `deny` (exit 20): do not execute. Tell the user it was blocked by

policy and why.

--require-review designates this call for mandatory human oversight: it always escalates regardless of score. Use it for the operations the deployer has decided a human must always sign off (this is the Article 14 designation). The risk is still scored and recorded.

2. Human resolves an escalation (done by a person, not the agent)

A reviewer lists, then resolves:

vaara review list --db queue.db --status pending
vaara review resolve --db queue.db --queue-id <id> \
  --reviewer <who> --resolution allow|deny \
  --justification "..." --audit-db audit.db

--audit-db writes the ESCALATION_RESOLVED record (Article 14(4)(d) evidence) into the same chain. On allow, the agent may now execute the call; on deny, it must not.

3. Record the outcome, after an allowed call ran

python scripts/governed_call.py outcome \
  --action-id <from step 1> --agent-id <agent> --tool <tool_name> \
  --result-json '{"...": "..."}' [--severity 0.0] --audit-db audit.db

4. Export the Article 12 package, when a regulator asks

python scripts/governed_call.py export-jsonl --audit-db audit.db --out trail.jsonl
vaara trail export-article12 --trail trail.jsonl --key <ed25519.pem> --out pack.zip
vaara trail verify --zip pack.zip

The package carries the full lifecycle (request, decision, escalation, resolution, execution, outcome), a human-readable report, and a verified hash chain. Add --anchor-tsa <url> to fold in an RFC 3161 time anchor (Article 19 existence-in-time evidence).

Trust model (read this)

• The verdict reflects Vaara's risk thresholds (--mode) and the deployer's

--require-review designations. It is governance, not ground truth.

• The audit trail is tamper-evident by hash chain; tamper-proof comes from

signing the export with a real key and anchoring it. The dev key from vaara keygen --dev is for evaluation only.

• This skill records and gates. It does not execute your tool or vouch for the

tool's own correctness.