kcp-harness

🧾 See it run — interactive KCP playground · read the reveal

Deterministic knowledge governance for any AI agent.

Your agent can read every file in your project. Can it prove why it read what it read?

KCP Harness is an MCP compliance proxy that sits between an AI coding agent and its tools. It intercepts knowledge-related calls, routes them through the kcp-agent deterministic planner (14-gate cascade, no LLM), and produces compliance artifacts — decision traces, audit logs, budget ledgers — as a side effect of normal agent operation.

The agent can't bypass governance because it only talks to the proxy's MCP interface. The proxy decides what knowledge is accessible, tracks spend, and logs every decision. Fail-closed: if the harness can't verify a request, the agent gets nothing.

Agent (Claude Code / Cursor / Copilot / Windsurf / Cline / Crush / OpenClaw / ...)
  │
  │  MCP tool call
  v
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  kcp-harness                                            │
│                                                         │
│  classify → govern (14 gates) → execute → audit         │
│                                                         │
│  Side outputs:                                          │
│  · Decision traces     (per-request, deterministic)     │
│  · Audit log           (append-only JSONL)              │
│  · Budget ledger       (itemized, ceiling-enforced)     │
│  · Temporal drift      (plan validity over time)        │
│  · Approval tickets    (named-human sign-off, durable)  │
│  · Confidence verdicts (post-synthesis gate)            │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
  │
  v
Knowledge manifests (knowledge.yaml)

Documentation →

Why

Enterprises need agents that are defensible — auditable, reproducible, budget-controlled, temporally pinned. Today's agents can't prove why they read what they read. The harness adds a compliance layer without replacing the agent.

What you keep	What the harness adds
Your agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, ...)	Deterministic knowledge selection
Your workflow (coding, reviewing, shipping)	Decision traces (14 gates per unit)
Your tools (MCP servers, shell, browser)	Budget enforcement (ceiling, per-currency)
	Temporal governance (drift detection)
	Append-only audit log
	Replay / cross-examination
	Human-approval gates (named reviewer + policy citation)
	Confidence gating (post-synthesis, route-to-human)

You sell the compliance layer. The agents are pluggable.

Install

npm install -g kcp-harness

Or use without installing:

npx kcp-harness --help

Native executables

Pre-built binaries (no Node/Deno required) for Linux x64/arm64, macOS x64/arm64, and Windows x64 — grab them from a release. To build one yourself:

npm ci && npm run build
deno compile --allow-read --allow-env --allow-net --allow-run \
  --node-modules-dir=auto --output kcp-harness dist/cli.js

Quick start

1. Initialize

kcp-harness init          # creates harness.yaml

2. Generate agent integration

kcp-harness integrate claude-code    # or: pi, cursor, copilot, windsurf, cline, continue, crush, openclaw

3. Start coding

Your agent now routes knowledge access through the harness. Every decision is logged.

Supported agents

Agent	Config	Integration
Claude Code	.mcp.json + PreToolUse hooks	kcp-harness integrate claude-code
Cursor	.cursor/mcp.json + .mdc rules	kcp-harness integrate cursor
GitHub Copilot	.vscode/mcp.json (uses "servers" key)	kcp-harness integrate copilot
Windsurf	global config + .windsurfrules	kcp-harness integrate windsurf
Cline	MCP settings + .clinerules	kcp-harness integrate cline
Continue	.continue/mcpServers/*.yaml	kcp-harness integrate continue
Crush	crush.json + PrepareStep	kcp-harness integrate crush
OpenClaw	openclaw.json + plugin hooks	kcp-harness integrate openclaw
Pi	.pi/mcp.json + project skills	kcp-harness integrate pi

Each agent has its own MCP config format, rules file, and quirks. The integrate command handles them all — one governance layer, any agent.

How it works

Every tool call flows through a five-stage pipeline:

1. RECEIVE      MCP JSON-RPC request from agent
2. CLASSIFY     Knowledge-navigation or pass-through?
3. GOVERN       14-gate cascade (audience → temporal → budget → ...)
4. EXECUTE      Call downstream tool / return content
5. AUDIT        Log decision to append-only audit log

Classifier

The classifier examines each tool call and determines whether it targets governed knowledge. Read("docs/api.md") where docs/ is governed? Route through the planner. Read("package.json") where package.json isn't governed? Pass through. KCP tools (kcp_plan, kcp_load) are always governed.

Governor

Two automated modes, plus a human gate that outranks both:

• Plan-first (fast path) — the agent calls kcp_plan first. The harness caches the approved plan. Subsequent reads are checked against the cached plan — no re-planning.
• Auto-plan (fallback) — the agent reads a governed path without planning. The harness runs the planner automatically. Slower, but governance is enforced even for agents that don't know about kcp_plan.
• Human approval — calls matching a governance.approvals rule are held for a named reviewer (pending), no matter what the automated paths would decide. Tickets survive restarts and resolve via the kcp-harness approvals CLI (or any custom ApprovalProvider channel). Resolutions require a named reviewer and a policy citation.

The 14-gate cascade

Every knowledge unit is evaluated through 14 deterministic gates, in order:

audience → not_for → temporal → deprecated → supersession → relevance →
skill_eligibility → attestation → payment → access → strict → max_units →
money_budget → context_budget

A unit must pass all gates. The gate that blocks it is recorded in the decision trace. Same inputs → same plan. No model involved.

For the skill_eligibility gate's subject matter — governed kind: skill units — the authoring conventions, linter, and conformance vectors live in Cantara/kcp-skill.

MCP tools

Once connected, agents can use these governance tools:

Tool	Description
kcp_plan	Deterministic load plan — which units, in what order, which skipped and why
kcp_load	Plan + load eligible unit content
kcp_trace	Full 14-gate decision trace
kcp_validate	Lint a knowledge.yaml
harness_status	Current governance state
harness_session	Approved plans + known units for this session
harness_budget	Itemized spend tracking
harness_temporal_check	Plan drift detection
harness_approvals	Human-approval tickets (pending / approved / dismissed / expired)
harness_assess	Confidence-gate a synthesized answer before acting on it

Compliance artifacts

Audit log

Append-only JSONL. Every decision — governed or pass-through — is logged with sequence number, timestamp, tool, targets, and governance decision:

cat .kcp-harness/audit.jsonl | jq 'select(.governed == true)'

Budget ledger

Append-only itemized spend tracking. Per-currency running totals. Ceiling enforcement — a load that would exceed the budget is rejected atomically (no partial loads).

Temporal governance

Plans are registered with a temporal watcher. On subsequent calls, the watcher re-evaluates against the current time. If units have drifted (expired, newly valid), the harness emits a drift event. Long-running sessions stay honest.

Approval tickets

Calls matching an approval rule open a durable ticket (pending_review → approved | dismissed | expired). The ticket store survives restarts — sessions are ephemeral, human review is not. Every resolution records who approved, when, and which policy it satisfies — evidence generated at approval time, never reconstructed from logs.

Confidence verdicts

harness_assess runs kcp-agent's post-synthesis assess() over a synthesized answer before it may be acted on. The planner gates loading, grounding gates asserting, this gates acting. Below-threshold verdicts on routed configs open an approval ticket with the full verdict embedded as evidence.

Configuration

# harness.yaml
version: "1.0"

governance:
  domains:
    - manifest: "./knowledge.yaml"
      paths: ["docs/", "src/"]

  policy:
    fail_closed: true
    audit_all: true
    max_units: 5
    budget:
      amount: 1.00
      currency: USDC

  confidence:                  # optional post-synthesis gate (harness_assess)
    threshold: 0.7
    severity: critical
    route_to_role: account-owner

  approvals:                   # optional human-approval gates
    provider: file
    rules:
      - match: { tools: [Write, Edit], paths: [records/] }
        required_role: account-owner
        expires_after: 72h
        policy_ref: POL-7.2

audit:
  path: ".kcp-harness/audit.jsonl"

CLI

kcp-harness serve  [--config harness.yaml]   Start the MCP proxy
kcp-harness init                             Create a harness.yaml template
kcp-harness check  [--config harness.yaml]   Validate configuration
kcp-harness integrate <agent> [options]       Generate agent integration files
kcp-harness integrate --list                  List supported agents
kcp-harness export   [options]               Export compliance evidence (SOC 2 / ISO 27001)
kcp-harness dashboard [options]              Launch the live compliance dashboard
kcp-harness approvals list [--state s]        List human-approval tickets
kcp-harness approvals approve <id> --reviewer <name> --policy-ref <ref>
kcp-harness approvals dismiss <id> --reviewer <name> --policy-ref <ref>

Library

import { classify, govern, BudgetLedger, TemporalWatch } from "kcp-harness";
import { generate, listAgents } from "kcp-harness";

// Classify a tool call
const result = classify("Read", { file_path: "docs/api.md" }, governedDomains);

// Generate integration files
const output = generate("claude-code", { manifest: "./knowledge.yaml", paths: ["docs/"] });

Architecture

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Layer 3: Integration Packages               │
│  Agent-specific configs + rules files        │
│  (claude-code, cursor, copilot, ...)         │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Layer 2: KCP Compliance Harness             │  ← THIS
│  MCP proxy — deterministic governance        │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Layer 1: kcp-agent (planner core)           │
│  14-gate cascade, decision traces            │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Forking agents puts you in competition. A harness puts you in composition.

Tests

npm test     # 314 tests across 20 test files

Covers the classifier, governor (incl. approval precedence), approval state machine + providers, confidence-gate wiring, proxy, audit, budget ledger, temporal watch, evidence export, dashboard, and all agent integrations.

License

Apache-2.0 · By eXOReaction AS, hosted under Cantara.