--- license: apache-2.0 pretty_name: "Governed Models: How KYE Protocol™ Brings Authority to AI Models" tags: - ai-governance - model-governance - data-governance - ai-bom - compliance - eu-ai-act - audit viewer: false --- # Governed Models: How KYE Protocol™ Brings Authority to AI Models **Your model is on Hugging Face. Its authority isn't.** The Hub answers "what can this model do?" brilliantly — weights, benchmarks, model cards, dataset lineage. It leaves unanswered the questions that block regulated adoption: - *May* you use this model in this jurisdiction, for this purpose, as this entity? - Which obligations apply when you deploy it — EU AI Act, GDPR, DORA, SOC 2? - Can you prove all of that to an auditor months later, from public artifacts? KYE Protocol™ (Know Your Entity™) exists to answer that second set of questions — and to prove the answers. ## Capability and authority are different questions Capability is what a model *can* do. Authority is whether a specific entity *may* use it, here, now, for this purpose, under these obligations. The Hub owns the first question. KYE Protocol™ owns the second. A regulated team needs both before it can ship. This is not a criticism of model cards. A model card is a capability disclosure written by the publisher. An authority record is a governed, evidence-backed answer about a *use* — bound to the entity using the model, the purpose it is used for, and the framework obligations that use carries. One artifact cannot honestly be both. ## The AI Bill of Materials: a Chain of Authority KYE Protocol™ binds a model to an **AI-BOM** — the dataset, weights, and model provenance — and maps its use to the obligations each framework carries: ``` Dataset ──▶ Weights ──▶ Model ──▶ KYE™ binding ──▶ Obligation map ──▶ Evidence Pack™ provenance training Hub AI-BOM · EU AI Act · GDPR Replay-Proof™ · · licence lineage artifact authority DORA · SOC 2 public keys ``` - **Chain of Authority** — KYE Protocol™ records which datasets trained which weights composed which model, under which licence. - **Obligation mapping** — the model's *use* is mapped to the obligations it carries, drawn from one canonical registry — never ad-hoc per deployment. - **Replay-Proof™ evidence** — every governance decision seals into an evidence pack an auditor can re-verify from public artifacts. ## Datasets are governed assets, not just files The Chain of Authority starts at the dataset — so dataset governance is not optional garnish. In KYE Protocol™ a dataset is a **governed data asset**, declared with the open `kye.data_asset.v1` contract: classification, per-field PII inventory, provenance, licence, retention. And every *use* of it by an agent — read, summarise, export, **train_model**, share, disclose — is checked at decision-time against an active `kye.data_use_manifest.v1`: does the purpose match, is the classification supportable, is the residency allowed, is the retention window still open? **Default-deny on every axis, one signed evidence row per access.** That is the [KYE Data Governance Pack™](https://kyeprotocol.com/data-governance.html), and it closes the question model governance alone cannot: *was this model even allowed to be trained on that data?* The datasets in the [KYE-Protocol org](https://huggingface.co/KYE-Protocol) dogfood the posture — each is declared as a public, Apache-2.0, provenance-pinned governed data asset. ## Declare → Assess → Certify Model governance in KYE Protocol™ is a short path, climbed one posture at a time: 1. **Declare** — identify the model and capture its AI-BOM: provenance and licence. The model is now *declared*. 2. **Assess** — KYE Protocol™ maps the obligations the intended use carries and reviews the evidence. The model is now *assessed*. 3. **Certify** — a signed evidence pack backs the framework coverage claim. The model is now *certified* — and adoptable by a regulated buyer. ## Models inside agentic systems: the action boundary Increasingly, models don't just answer — they *act*, inside agent loops that delegate work across handoffs. Governance that stops at deployment time misses the risk that matters at run time: the authorised meaning of an instruction can drift between the principal who gave it and the model call that executes it. KYE Protocol™ therefore governs at the **action boundary**: before a delegated action is admitted, it checks whether original intent, constraints, context, memory, incentives, timing and state remain aligned across handoffs. That check is KYE Meaning Continuity™ — you can try an open reference implementation interactively in the [KYE Meaning Continuity Lab™ Space](https://huggingface.co/spaces/KYE-Protocol/meaning-continuity-lab). ## Honest scope KYE Protocol™ certifies **provenance and governance posture**. It does not certify capability, safety, or fairness — those remain the domain of evals, red-teaming, and the model card. And a framework KYE Protocol™ has not mapped stays honestly *out of scope*: coverage is never inflated to 100%. Governance claims you cannot defend in front of an auditor are worse than no claims at all. ## Who this is for - **Model & dataset publishers** — a governed signal that makes your artifact adoptable by regulated buyers. - **Regulated adopters** in finance, health, and government — prove governance, don't assert it. - **Builders of agentic systems** — an authority check at the action boundary, not a post-hoc audit. ## Open contracts, governed runtime The contracts are open (Apache-2.0) and live in this org: [schemas](https://huggingface.co/datasets/KYE-Protocol/schemas) · [reason-codes](https://huggingface.co/datasets/KYE-Protocol/reason-codes) · [examples](https://huggingface.co/datasets/KYE-Protocol/examples). The managed engines that operationalise them are commercial. - This article on the Hugging Face blog: [hf.co/blog/masoudmarandi/kye-models-governance](https://huggingface.co/blog/masoudmarandi/kye-models-governance) - Model governance on the Hub, end-to-end: [kyeprotocol.com/huggingface.html](https://kyeprotocol.com/huggingface.html) - Source of truth: [github.com/KYE-Protocol](https://github.com/KYE-Protocol) - Engage: [kyeprotocol.com/engage.html](https://kyeprotocol.com/engage.html) --- KYE™, KYE Protocol™, Know Your Entity™, KYE Meaning Continuity™, Evidence Pack™ and Replay-Proof™ are trademarks of the KYE Protocol™ project. Text of this article: Apache-2.0.