Every decision waiting, as a card.
Pick an option and press a verb. Steer and redirect ask for words first. A card stays until the work is accounted for.
Chorix · Judgment Layer
A human ruling,
inside the system.
The Judgment Layer puts a person's ruling inside any graph, agent or orchestration system, and keeps a signed record of every one.
Your system poses a decision with its recommendation. A person rules on it with one of five verbs. Your system resumes on that ruling. Every pose, ruling and acknowledgment is kept in a record you can export and verify offline.
For the people who answer for the outcome: finance, legal, compliance, operations, and the engineers who build for them.
Your system
poses the decision and pauses.
Your system
resumes on the ruling and accounts for the work.
The record
keeps all of it, signed.
Why it exists
Agents act quickly.
Someone still answers for the act.
A payment, a deletion, a deployment, a clause sent to the other side. Once software can do these, the question is who decided, on what, and whether that can be shown afterwards.
Authority
An approval that software can press is not an approval.
If the agent holds the same key as the person, the control is a formality.
Evidence
A yes in a chat thread is not a record.
It does not say what was asked, what was recommended, what was chosen, or what was then done.
Memory
The same question is asked again next month.
What the same person ruled last time, and why, is rarely in front of whoever rules next.
The layer
One layer, placed between
two you already have.
The Judgment Layer goes into a system that already works. It sits before the step that acts, holds that act until a person rules, and hands the ruling back.
- Above · yours
Your graph, agent or workflow.
It reaches an act it should not take alone, poses the decision, and pauses.
- The Judgment Layer
The pose, the authority, the ruling, the record.
It files the question, finds who may rule, checks that a person did, and returns the ruling.
- Beneath · yours
The act itself.
The payment, the deletion, the deployment. It runs only after the ruling, and its account goes back on the record.
The withheld content never passes through the Judgment Layer. Your system holds it and delivers it unmodified.
The loop
Pose, pause, rule, resume,
account, acknowledge.
- Pose
- Pause
- Rule
- Resume
- Account
- Acknowledge
The whole integration is a handful of tool calls, one pause in your system and one resume.
Your system poses.
A question, one to eight options, its own recommendation, and the scope of the act. The recommendation is committed before any verb exists.
Your system pauses.
Interrupt, checkpoint, park the job. Nothing executes while the act is withheld.
A person rules.
On the desk, with one verb. The options are shown in shuffled order, so the recommendation is never simply the first.
Your system resumes.
The ruling comes back once, in three shapes: generic, LangGraph, and the Judgment Layer's own.
Your system accounts.
When the work is done it files what was actually done, against the same row.
The principal acknowledges.
The person reads the account and classes the outcome. Only acknowledged rows are counted.
What a steer returned to the system · agent door, await_ruling
{
"verb": "steer",
"outcome": "deliver",
"destination": "drafting",
"instruction": "Take the cap at twenty-four months. Keep the
data-breach carve-out, and say why in the cover note.",
"content": "unmodified",
"generic": {
"proceed": true,
"next": "drafting",
"stop": false,
"waiting": false
}
}
The JSON is the product's own answer on the capture run, shortened to the fields shown; the instruction is wrapped here for width.
The five verbs
Five verbs and one control.
Nothing else exists.
A ruling is one verb on one decision. A condition attached to a yes is a steer, in the person's own words.
approvedeliver
The chosen option goes ahead, and the handoff is delivered unmodified.
steerdeliver, with words
It goes ahead with the person's instruction beside it. The content itself is never edited.
rejectrefuse
None of these. Your system takes its refusal path.
stopend
The run ends.
redirectstill withheld
The open decision passes to the next approver, or a named one. Your system stays paused.
HOLDstill withheld
A deliberate not yet. It rules nothing and the decision stays open.
Routing is data on the options, never a new verb: an option can name where the handoff goes if it is the one approved.
The desk
One page,
where the ruling is made.
The desk is a page on the machine that runs the Judgment Layer. It asks for a sign-in, then shows what is waiting.
Coherence, override, arbitration, divergence, conformance.
Counted from acknowledged rows only. Arbitration sends the work back for another pass.
Each decision under the thread that posed it.
Named as your system names it: the framework, the thread or run, the node, with where each one stands.
Three more ways to see the same deck.
The Booth docks the Podium, one decision at a time on a ring of the verbs. The Ledger window carries the live tallies, the blind trial, the domains and the recent record.
Your system does not need the desk to be open. A pose waits on the record until someone rules, and the ruling waits there until your system reads it.
Every capture on this page is the product itself, run from the bundle on a spare port with a scratch record and four poses written for the purpose. Its title bar still reads Judgment Ledger. The says exactly how.
Two doors
The agent cannot rule,
because the tool is not there.
The Judgment Layer speaks MCP, the Model Context Protocol, through two separate doors. They never share a key.
The agent door · 15 tools
What you give your graph, agent or workflow.
- pose a decision and wait for the ruling
- read precedent for a scope
- file its account of the work
- read the record and check it
It cannot rule, acknowledge or change who has authority. Those tools are absent from this door, not merely refused.
The authority door · 39 tools
For the people who rule.
- the verbs and the acknowledgments
- approvers, grants and escalation chains
- principals, agent connections and passkeys
- the licence, the corpus and the sealed export
Every tool that rules, acknowledges or changes authority needs a human credential, and the core checks it.
Agent connections
One credential per connected system.
Each graph, agent or workflow has its own, with its own permissions. Every pose is stamped with the connection that made it.
Scope
A closed register of acts and surfaces.
Ten acts, from read to spend, on ten surfaces. A pose outside it is refused. Your own words for acts are aliases onto it.
Precedent
Shown as information, never applied.
What the same person ruled before in that scope, in their words, is put beside the new decision. Nothing rules by precedent.
Passkeys
Every ruling carries
proof of a human hand.
A credential is a file, and a program running as you could read a file. A passkey, confirmed with a PIN or a fingerprint on the person's own device, is what a program cannot supply.
The principal and every approver.
A new installation asks for a passkey on every ruling and every acknowledgment. Lowering that is the owner's act, takes the owner's passkey, and shows a plain warning first.
The passkey signs the exact act.
The row, the verb, the option, the words. A submission that differs from what was signed is refused.
No agent connection before the owner's passkey.
The product creates none at first run. The owner enrols a passkey on the desk, then creates each connection there.
The product says this itself: run agents under a separate operating-system account or in a container, not as yourself.
Approvers and escalation
When the decision is not yours alone,
the chain finds who may rule.
An organization can name approvers and escalation chains. While your system is paused, the Judgment Layer locates authority along the chain by the clock. Approvers are never counted in the price.
Grants
Authority with a shape.
Which verbs, over what scope, in what position on the chain, up to what amount, until when. Single or dual decision.
Notices
By email, webhook, Slack or the console.
The person next in the chain gets a notice with a single-use code, on their own channel.
Attribution
Who held it, when, and what was tried.
Every ruling is recorded with who made it. A late, out-of-scope or unproven attempt is refused.
Off the network · off by default
The hosted relay.
An approver elsewhere can rule from a page on the Chorix Studio site. Your machine fetches the ruling and applies it itself. The site's half is to build.
Ruling from a phone on the same network is disabled in this release, pending a security review. The Podium and the Booth open on the machine that runs the Judgment Layer and nowhere else.
The record
Signed on your machine.
Checked without us.
Every write is an event on a hash chain. An export of the record is sealed with a key made and kept on your own machine.
One file checks it. No network, no account.
The verifier ships in the bundle. It confirms the seal, that every event follows the one before it, and that every row is the state its last event recorded.
Compare a newer export with an older one.
The older export's past must be the newer one's past. The verifier says plainly what it cannot prove alone, and that this comparison is what exposes it.
A judgment is not retracted.
An open decision can be withdrawn. A ruled one can be reopened for another pass, linked to the first. Neither removes what happened.
One command, while it runs.
Records, registry and licence, with a manifest of hashes. Restore refuses a backup whose files do not match it.
The bundle's verifier on an export of the capture run
> node tools/verify/chorix-record-verify.mjs export.json VALID -- chorix-record-export of workspace 91afccb8-… seal: verifies (key 5bsec/40b3UsKuA=) head: seq 15 3f7334b5998d354d... chain 91afccb8: 15 events, 7 rows matched, 0 pre-genesis chain *: 0 events, 0 rows matched, 0 pre-genesis
Printed by the verifier in the bundle, exit code 0, on the record the captures on this page came from. The workspace id is shortened here.
Where it lives, and what leaves
It runs on your machine.
What leaves it is printed, in full.
The copy on your machine is the original. It stays readable and exportable there with or without the service, paid or not.
On your machine
The core, the desk, the record.
- one data folder holds everything it keeps
- the signing key and the credentials never leave it
- the withheld content never reaches the Judgment Layer at all
- no model runs in it, and nothing is used for training
Leaves it · on by default
The hosted record: a signed copy on the Chorix Studio site.
- every decision, ruling, account and acknowledgment, words included
- kept so the record can be read and exported if the machine is lost
- SPEKTX can read it; it is not encrypted against us
- the owner turns it off with a passkey; the copy is then offered as a final export and deleted after 30 days
The product prints what it sends when it starts, and shows the same list on the desk. The site's side of the hosted record, where it is read and exported, is to build.
Integrate
Your system keeps its own pause.
The gate is a few calls.
Any MCP client can call it over stdio or streamable HTTP. The bundle ships a gate for LangGraph in Python that needs only the standard library, a gate for Node, and the contract for everything else.
| System | It pauses with | It resumes with | In the bundle |
|---|---|---|---|
| LangGraph · LangChain agents | an interrupt in the gate node | a Command; the node re-runs and reads the ruling by its decision key | the LangGraph gate |
| LangSmith Deployment | the thread is interrupted | a poller waits for the ruling, then starts a run on the thread | the same file |
| CrewAI · AutoGen · OpenAI Agents | a tool that blocks, or a task that parks | the tool returns the generic resume | the MCP tools, called directly |
| Temporal · Step Functions · a queue | an activity that returns waiting | the activity reads the ruling and returns it | the Node gate or the Python class |
| n8n · Make · Zapier | an HTTP node posting to the door | a wait node, then a read of the ruling | none needed |
| Claude Code · Codex · any MCP client | the tool call itself waits | the tool result | the stdio door |
Idempotent
A node that re-runs never poses twice.
A stable decision key returns the existing row with its ruling.
Fail closed
A wake-up is not a ruling.
Whatever resumes your system, the gate reads the ruling from the record. A resume that arrives early pauses again.
Requirements
Node.js 24 or later.
Windows, macOS or Linux. Unzip, put the licence file beside START, run START.
SPEKTX is not affiliated with LangChain, Inc. or any other orchestration vendor, and none of them endorses this product. Each name belongs to its owner.
Current implementation status
An honest look
at what exists.
Walked means it was done on the bundle itself for this page, with the result on file. In the bundle means it was read in the bundle's code and its own documentation and not walked here. To build is not there yet. Every row still owes the principal's own walk.
The productOn the machine
0.12.0the bundle
Pose, ruling, resume, account, acknowledgmentWalked
Two doors: 15 tools for agents, 39 for authorityWalked
Passkey on every ruling; agent connections after itWalked
Desk, Threads, Booth, Podium, Ledger windowWalked
The desk in black and purple, with the markWalked
Sealed export and the offline verifierWalked
Approvers, grants, escalation, noticesIn the bundle
LangGraph and Node gatesIn the bundle
Backup and restoreIn the bundle
Around itThe service
Draftthe agreement
Licence: paid, grace, lapse; records never lockedIn the bundle
Hosted record: the machine's sending sideIn the bundle
Hosted record: reading and export on the siteTo build
Hosted relay for approvers off the networkTo build
Checkout, account page, licence issue and renewalTo build
Ruling from a phone on the same networkDisabled
The subscription agreementDraft
The name in the product: Judgment LayerTo build
Pricing
Per organization.
Never per person who approves.
A subscription, tiered by the number of principals and the number of connected systems, whichever is exceeded first. Approvers are never counted. There is no free tier. Annual is ten months' price.
Judgment$99 a month
- up to 5 principals
- up to 10 connected systems
- approvers without limit
$990 a year
Team$199 a month
- up to 15 principals
- up to 30 connected systems
- approvers without limit
$1,990 a year
Business$349 a month
- up to 40 principals
- up to 80 connected systems
- approvers without limit
$3,490 a year
Enterprisefrom $999 a month
- 41 principals or more
- connected systems by order
- approvers without limit
by order
If a payment is missed
Fourteen days of grace.
Work continues. After that, new poses are refused, and the calling system is told why.
No stranded run
Open decisions stay rulable for seven days.
A paused run is not left hanging by a payment event.
Always yours
The record is never locked.
Records, exports and the corpus on your machine stay readable whatever the licence says.
A principal is a person whose judgment the record captures. A connected system is one graph, agent or workflow with its own credential. Checkout is not open; these are the figures the product itself enforces.
What it does not promise
Risk controls,
not guarantees.
Plainly
It withholds an act until a person rules.
It does not promise that a person will rule within any time, that your system will honour the ruling, or that your own pause and resume will work. A ruling is the act of the person who makes it.
Not for
The sole control where failure costs a life.
Life support, emergency response, medical treatment, aviation or vehicle safety, industrial safety interlocks, and uses like them.
The family
Built inside Chorix, for Chorix.
Now offered alone.
Chorix is human-governed orchestration of several AI models, and its Ledger is where its principal rules. The Judgment Layer is that ledger, its judgment and its governance of approval, cut out to stand alone inside a system someone else built.
Questions, answered once
The short
answers.
No. The door an agent is given carries no tool that rules, acknowledges or changes authority. Those tools are on a second door that opens only on a human credential, and by default every ruling also needs that person's passkey.
No. Your system keeps its own pause and resume. The Judgment Layer owns the pose, the authority, the ruling and the record.
On your own machine, on Windows, macOS or Linux, with Node.js 24 or later. The desk is a page on that machine.
Yes, and the product prints what. A signed copy of the record, words included, is kept on the Chorix Studio site by default so it can be read and exported if the machine is lost; the owner can turn it off with a passkey. SPEKTX can read that copy.
Yes. A record export is sealed with a key made and kept on your machine, and the verifier that ships in the bundle checks it offline.
After a 14-day grace period new poses are refused. Decisions already open stay open to rule for seven days. The record, its exports and the corpus on your machine are never locked.
One layer · between the system and the act