Spin State Labs · AI Governance Standard

The F.I.E.L.D.
Framework

Five letters that keep autonomous agents accountable.
A company-standard governance layer from Spin State Labs. Where FORCE constrains what an AI says, FIELD constrains how an AI is deployed, owned, and audited.

Get the framework → See the five letters
Companion framework: FORCE — runtime prompt protocol · Together: the Force Field Protocol
Why FIELD exists

Three concerns that runtime protocols alone cannot fix.

FORCE keeps individual AI responses defensible. But once an autonomous agent is out in the world — pulling data, sending messages, taking irreversible actions — you have a class of problems that no amount of prompt engineering will solve. FIELD is the governance layer for exactly those problems.

Agentic Harnessing

What stops an autonomous agent when it goes wrong? Kill switches, action boundaries, escalation triggers, spend caps. The brakes and rails of agentic operation.

AI Sovereignty

Who owns this agent? Whose interests does it represent? In what jurisdiction does it operate? What authority has been delegated, and by whom?

AI Federation

When agents from different organizations must interoperate, what trust protocols govern the boundary? What data crosses; what stays sovereign?

The framework

Five letters. One manifest.

FIELD is a governance manifest that ships with every autonomous agent Spin State Labs deploys. YAML, versioned, cryptographically sealed audit trail. Each of the five letters constrains one dimension of agent deployment.

F
Federation

Agents from different organizations must interoperate without leaking authority. Federation defines the trust protocols, contract semantics, and boundary controls that let agents work across sovereign lines.

Manifest entry
federation: trust_boundary: "spin-state-labs" allowed_peers: ["stripe.com", "anthropic.com"] peer_verification: "mtls" data_crossing: forbidden: ["pii", "raw_documents"]
I
Identity

Every autonomous agent represents a principal. Identity nails down attribution: who owns this agent, whose interests it serves, what jurisdiction governs its operation, what data scope it is authorized to touch.

Manifest entry
identity: principal: "cfo@client.com" org: "client-alpha" jurisdiction: "CA-ON" data_scope: "client-tier-A" agent_id: "fp-analyst-2026-06"
E
Enforcement

Autonomous agents need brakes and rails. Enforcement defines the runtime harnessing — kill switches for immediate halt, action boundaries the agent structurally cannot cross, escalation triggers that pause for human review, spend caps.

Manifest entry
enforcement: kill_switch: "/admin/halt/agent-alpha" spend_cap_usd: 500 escalation_triggers: ["pii_access", "amount_gt_10000"] irreversible_actions: ["post_je", "email_external"]
L
Ledger

If it isn't logged, it didn't happen — and if the record can be rewritten, the audit is theatre. Ledger writes a cryptographic immutable audit trail. Tamper-evident sealing means neither the agent nor the operator can rewrite history after the fact.

Manifest entry
ledger: store: "s3://spin-state-audit/prod" retention_days: 2555 cryptographic_seal: true seal_algorithm: "sha256-chained" includes: ["decisions", "actions", "delegations", "refusals"]
D
Delegation

Autonomous agents act on behalf of humans. Delegation makes the authorization chain explicit — what actions has this agent been delegated authority to perform, by whom, within what scope, revocable when. Without a clear delegation chain, there is no sovereignty.

Manifest entry
delegation: granted_by: "cfo@client.com" scope: ["read_gl", "draft_je_amount_lt_10000"] scope_forbidden: ["post_je", "email_external"] valid_until: "2026-12-31" revocation_url: "/admin/revoke/agent-alpha"
The full kit

Four assets. One form.

The one-pager and Claude Code plugin install are free with no friction. The framework document and manifest templates ship via email so we can send updates as the framework evolves.

Claude Code — install directly
# Add the marketplace
/plugin marketplace add SpinStateLabs/Force-Field
# Install FIELD
/plugin install field@force-field
# Verify
/field
📄
Free · no email

The one-pager

Branded PDF — light and dark. Print, pin, share.

↓ Dark ↓ Light
📘

Framework doc

Full reference. Every letter, every manifest field, examples.

→ Get via email
Claude Code

The plugin

/field slash command with init, validate, assess, audit, export.

↗ GitHub
📋

Manifest templates

Default, financial-agent, read-only-agent, client-facing-agent.

→ Get via email

Get the framework doc + templates

We'll email you the FIELD framework doc, the JSON manifest schema, and all four manifest templates. One message. No drip campaigns unless you opt in below.

Positioning

What FIELD is and isn't.

Governance is a crowded category. FIELD is not trying to compete with NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, or the EU AI Act. It's the layer beneath them — the artifact that travels with each individual agent.

FIELD IS

  • Practitioner-implementable governance for agentic AI
  • Per-agent — the manifest ships with the agent, versioned, audited
  • Complementary to broad frameworks (ISO 42001 + FIELD works)
  • Focused on autonomous agents acting on behalf of principals
  • Composable with FORCE (default runtime protocol)

FIELD IS NOT

  • A replacement for NIST AI RMF or ISO/IEC 42001
  • An EU AI Act compliance framework
  • A political statement about national AI sovereignty
  • An academic ethics manifesto
  • A runtime enforcer (v1.0 is manifest-and-audit; enforcement in v1.1)
Who built this

Built in production.

Spin State Labs is a Waterloo-based AI and quantum company operating as a semi-autonomous AI corporation. We build AI-first FP&A software and photonic quantum devices. FIELD is the governance standard we apply to every agent we deploy — internally and for clients.

DH

Don Hagell

Founder · Spin State Labs

Senior technology and finance executive. Deep expertise in enterprise performance management, AI transformation, and agentic systems. FIELD came out of the operational reality of running a semi-autonomous AI corporation — every agent that ships has to answer the same five questions, or it doesn't ship.

Where this fits

When agents drive real decisions.

Agentic AI · Governance advisory · NSPB & EPBCS

FIELD is one piece of how Spin State ships defensible agentic AI into enterprise financial planning. If you're deploying autonomous agents into audit-adjacent work and you want the governance discipline we apply to every client engagement — let's talk.

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