EGAF OSS Maintainer profile for open-source projects

2026-08-30 · Assurance

The OSS Maintainer profile is for projects that publish open source. It stays at L1. EGAF defines exactly three levels, so the extra weight is a frameworks union, not a fourth grade. SLSA v1.2 is already in Core and is not listed again.

Pre-release, founder-operated system; current capability labels describe the evidence boundary.

How the Evidence-Gated Assurance Framework works

The Evidence-Gated Assurance Framework (EGAF) is a spec-first assurance bar. It is in flight. A project claims conformance to EGAF L1, L2, or L3 at a given commit, with evidence attached. It is not a certification, an accreditation, or an authorization. Independent assessment of any organization remains a separate question.

Three parts make a run:

  1. A control catalog. Each control is either a machine check (an artifact an independent tool produced) or an evidence: attestation (a signed statement by a named principal). A named check with no backing artifact is DRIFT, never PROVEN. An empty-but-parsable file is not a verdict.
  2. A deterministic evaluator. Same inputs produce a byte-identical conformance report. The evaluator does not run tests or scanners. It reads artifacts other tools already produced and records their digests. An agent cannot manufacture PROVEN without producing the artifact the check names.
  3. A committed profile. .egaf/profile.yaml in the consumer repo is what CI evaluates. If that file is absent, the evaluator uses the bundled core profile, so L1 mandatory controls always apply. Profiles may only tighten a threshold; a loosening override is rejected at validation time.

Three levels. L1 Core is mandatory to claim any EGAF conformance: traceability, complexity and duplication caps, whole-codebase statement and branch coverage, mutation on changed files, verifier integrity, signed evidence, supply-chain hygiene. An EXCEPTION never satisfies an L1 control. L2 Regulated adds industry-profile controls (evidence packs, retention, model-risk records). L3 Safety-critical adds independence, structural coverage, tool-qualification inputs, and hazard linkage. Fail one applicable L1 control and the report's first line is L0.

Control status is derived from the seven check outcomes already used in Koinessa evidence bundles:

Check outcome Control status
PASS PROVEN
FAIL FAILED
SKIPPED-NOT-APPLICABLE with a recorded reason NOT-APPLICABLE
INFRASTRUCTURE-ERROR, TOOL-MISSING, EVIDENCE-INVALID, or ABSTAIN DRIFT
Missing evidence DRIFT

A level is achieved only when every applicable control at that level and below is PROVEN or NOT-APPLICABLE (L2/L3 may also count an unexpired EXCEPTION with an independent approver). The report always shows two honesty lists: Not proven (FAILED and DRIFT) and Accepted without proof (NOT-APPLICABLE and EXCEPTION). A clean badge over an empty honesty block is the failure the framework exists to prevent.

Frameworks are guidance. Controls are behavior. Evidence proves the behavior occurred. Organizational burdens — training, physical security, BAAs, a C3PAO assessment, DO-330 tool qualification, a SOC 2 Type II engagement — stay with the organization. The catalog cites clause identifiers and paraphrases; it does not reproduce normative text.

The catalog this series describes is a measured snapshot: 109 controls, vendored into Koinessa at pin 0.0.0-dev+98d08ef on 2026-08-30. The public specification repository is planned; until the operator creates its GitLab group, treat EGAF as a labeled pre-1.0 draft with publication pending. Koinessa's own first mainline conformance report is planned.

Read the Koinessa whitepaper for the surrounding Evidence-Gated Agentic Development thesis, and the verified-delivery report for what this system already publishes about itself.

The OSS Maintainer profile (id oss-maintainer, L1)

In flight. Source: vendor/egaf/catalog/profiles/oss-maintainer.yaml. Extends core.

Added frameworks, on top of Core's SSDF v1.1, NIST SP 800-218A, SLSA v1.2, in-toto v1, NIST SP 800-207, NIST AI RMF 1.0, NIST AI 600-1, ISO/IEC 5055, ISO/IEC 25010, ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119, WCAG 2.2, OpenTelemetry, and DORA practices:

No new controls beyond L1. The "L1+" label in earlier prose meant "Core plus these two identity frameworks," not a new achievement rule. A project still fails to L0 if any applicable L1 control is FAILED or DRIFT.

Retention stays 12 months — the inherited Core floor. No sourced retention obligation applies to a project whose only distinguishing fact is publishing open source.

This profile is the right overlay when the software you ship is a public repository and you want Scorecard and OSPS Baseline in the crosswalk without taking on a regulated retention floor. It is the wrong overlay if you are in PCI, HIPAA, CMMC, or a safety-critical DAL/ASIL/SIL program; those are the L2 and L3 pages in this series.

Open-source publication does not make EGAF public. The specification repository itself remains planned until its GitLab group exists. These posts describe the vendored catalog Koinessa already consumes.

What this page does not claim

EGAF conformance is a per-commit statement a project makes about itself with evidence attached. It does not confer a certification, a SLSA level, or an authorization to operate. Citing a framework in a profile is a crosswalk, not a state the adopter has reached. Planned items carry no dates.

This article is one of ten in a series. Each page keeps the same mechanics and changes the profile.

The rest of the engineering blog covers the verification loop that EGAF sits on. The Koinessa home page states the product position.