Anchor — Governance Engine for AI

"Governance without enforcement is documentation."

Anchor is the surveillance and enforcement layer for AI. It audits AI-adjacent code against a cryptographically sealed constitutional rule set, mapping every violation to the exact statute it breaches — enforced deterministically via AST analysis, runtime interceptors, and behavioral verification (Diamond Cage).

🌐 anchorgovernance.tech

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Why Anchor Exists

Event	Date	Amount
Goldman Sachs CFPB enforcement — AI explainability failure	Oct 2024	$45M
EU AI Act full enforcement begins — credit scoring, AML, fraud	Aug 2026	Mandatory
SEC AI Governance — named #1 examination priority, above crypto	2026	Mandatory
RBI FREE-AI — 26 mandatory recommendations, per-decision audit trails	Aug 2025	Mandatory

The regulators have started counting. Anchor enforces.

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What Anchor Does

• Static Code Analysis (Layer 01) — Tree-sitter AST scanning against a cryptographically sealed constitutional rule set. Every violation gets a violation_id mapped to the exact regulation it breaches.
• Diamond Cage (Layer 02) — WASM-based behavioral verification sandbox. Proves security invariants at scan time, not just static pattern matching. Reports as Diamond Cage: ACTIVE.
• Hybrid Healer (Sovereign Scalpel) — Goes beyond detection to remediation. Proposes file-specific AST patches, applied via anchor heal --apply.
• Interceptor SDK — First-party support for 20+ LLM providers. Secure prompts and responses mid-flight with AnchorGuard.
• Federated Governance Workspace — Structured .anchor/ directory with mandatory core domains and opt-in frameworks/regulators declared in constitution.anchor.

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The Federated Model

Anchor operates on a three-layer constitutional architecture:

Layer	File	Purpose
Constitution	constitution.anchor	Defines WHAT risks exist. Domain + framework + regulator manifest. SHA-256 sealed via remote GOVERNANCE.lock.
Mitigation Catalog	mitigation.anchor	Defines HOW to detect each risk. Regex + AST patterns. Cloud-synced.
State Law	policy.anchor	Your local overrides. Change severity, add company-specific rules.

Merge Strategy: State Law overrides Constitution by rule ID, but only within the constitutional floor. Critical security rules (e.g., ANC-007) are locked at blocker. Local policy can make rules stricter, never weaker.

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Coverage — V4.3.5

Tier	Content	Count
Domain Rules	SEC, ETH, PRV, ALN, AGT, LEG, OPS, SUP, SHR	43 rules
Standards Bodies	FINOS AI Governance, OWASP LLM Top 10 · 2025, NIST AI RMF 1.0	3 frameworks
Government Regulators	RBI FREE-AI 2025, EU AI Act 2024/1689, SEBI AI/ML 2025, CFPB Reg B, FCA 2024, SEC 2026	6 regulators
Total Regulatory Mappings		170 mappings

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Quick Start

Install from PyPI

pip install anchor-audit

Or install from source

git clone https://github.com/Tanishq1030/Anchor.git
cd Anchor
pip install -e .

Initialize your project

anchor init

Sets up .anchor/, syncs the constitution & mitigation catalog, and installs the Git pre-commit hook.

Scan your code

# Full governance audit
anchor check ./src

# Scan with all frameworks and regulators
anchor init --all && anchor check ./src

Review and apply fixes

anchor heal          # Review suggested fixes
anchor heal --apply  # Apply all auto-fixable issues

Full command reference: USAGE.md

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CI/CD Integration

Anchor acts as the enforcement gate in GitHub Actions. If a PR violates the constitution, Anchor blocks the merge with a detailed violation report.

# .github/workflows/anchor-audit.yml
- name: Run Governance Check
  run: |
    pip install anchor-audit
    anchor check --dir ./src --severity error --json-report --github-summary

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Suppressing Findings

When a finding is a justified use (e.g., your governance tool legitimately needs subprocess), suppress it with an inline comment:

# Per-rule suppression
result = subprocess.run(cmd, capture_output=True)  # anchor: ignore ANC-018

# Suppress all rules on a line
os.environ.get("SECRET_KEY")  # anchor: ignore-all

Feature	Details
Scope	Line-level only
Audit Trail	Anchor uses git blame to record who authorized each suppression
Visibility	Suppressed findings appear in the report with the author's name

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Project Structure

Anchor/
├── anchor/                     # Core package
│   ├── cli.py                  # CLI entry point (click)
│   ├── core/
│   │   ├── engine.py           # PolicyEngine — AST scanning via tree-sitter
│   │   ├── healer.py           # Hybrid Healer — fix suggestion and patching
│   │   ├── constitution.py     # SHA-256 integrity verification
│   │   ├── loader.py           # Federated policy merger
│   │   └── mapper.py           # GenAI threat model → rule mapper
│   ├── runtime/                # Interceptor SDK
│   │   ├── guard.py            # AnchorGuard application safety API
│   │   └── interceptors/       # SDK and HTTP library patches
│   └── adapters/               # Language-specific tree-sitter adapters
├── tests/                      # Test suite
├── .anchor/                    # Governance workspace (committed)
│   ├── domains/                # Core domain rules (SEC, ETH, PRV ...)
│   ├── frameworks/             # FINOS, OWASP, NIST
│   └── government/             # RBI, EU AI Act, SEBI, CFPB, FCA, SEC
├── constitution.anchor         # Active framework/regulator manifest
├── mitigation.anchor           # Detection pattern catalog
├── case-studies/               # Real-world audit case studies
└── docs/                       # Architecture documentation

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Security Architecture — SHA-256 Tamper Proofing

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  GitHub Raw (Source of Truth)                    │
│  constitution.anchor  →  SHA-256: 3745014B...   │
│  mitigation.anchor    →  SHA-256: E3E32531...   │
└────────────────┬────────────────────────────────┘
                 │ fetch + verify
┌────────────────▼────────────────────────────────┐
│  .anchor/cache/ (Local)                         │
│  Hash mismatch → INTEGRITY VIOLATION            │
│  Hash match    → Proceed with audit             │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

No developer can weaken the rules to pass the audit. The hashes are baked into the Python package itself.

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Configuration

Variable	Default	Description
ANCHOR_CONSTITUTION_URL	GitHub Raw URL	Override for air-gapped/mirror setups
ANCHOR_MITIGATION_URL	GitHub Raw URL	Override for the mitigation catalog
ANCHOR_VERBOSE	false	Enable detailed debug output
ANCHOR_FETCH_TIMEOUT	10	Timeout (seconds) for cloud sync

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Contributing

• Contributing Guide
• Open an Issue
• PyPI Package
• ✉️ tan@anchorgovernance.tech

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License

Apache 2.0 — Open source. Built for the era of AI-Assisted Engineering.

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Anchor V4.3.5 · anchorgovernance.tech · Apache 2.0