Assessment and evidence
Participation is not competence. The programme is designed so that a pass rests on produced work that others can inspect: a versioned Mandate Package, a Foundation Evidence Record, controlled operation and revocation, and an oral defence under a live change. The architecture exists at development-draft level; it has not yet been validated on a cohort.

Why not attendance
A person can attend every session and still be unable to bound a system so that a stranger could operate, test and revoke it. A certificate of attendance does not tell an employer, an insurer or a regulator whether the holder can do this. The Institute's assessment therefore rests on a dossier a third party could audit, produced under conditions that make it hard to fake, and defended in person.
The assessed objects
- Mandate Package — nine linked artefacts, developed from v0.1 in week two to v1.0-final in week eight, every earlier version retained.
- Foundation Evidence Record — the index of versions, decisions, returns, tests, incidents and scores that supports the competence decision.
- Controlled operation and revocation — a run against a runtime event pack and a verified revocation under an injected failure, both in simulation.
- Oral defence and live change challenge — the learner must explain the work and revise the design competently under a material change.
AI assistance is expected. Every artefact carries an AI-use declaration; the learner remains responsible for every claim, decision and item of evidence.
Pass rules, as designed
Critical gates cannot be averaged away
A score below competent in any of the four gates — boundaries, evidence, revocation, accountability — blocks a pass regardless of the overall total. A high total with an open gate is a non-pass.
Automatic non-pass conditions
Fabricated or knowingly misrepresented evidence; a principal knowingly represented as valid without authority; required or prohibited actions left materially undefined; no demonstrable pause or revocation path; inability to explain or defend the submitted design; authorship that cannot be established.
Two readers and moderation
A first assessor scores every domain with cited evidence; an independent second reader blind-scores the gate dimensions; material disagreement goes to moderation on the descriptors. These roles are designed; no assessor or independent second reader has yet been appointed.
Status. Programme content complete at development-draft level; closed Design Pilot in preparation. The assessment architecture is designed and approved internally for closed pilot preparation only; it is unvalidated. The programme specification proposes an assessment-based, non-degree outcome; no credential is currently available or issued. No accreditation exists or is claimed; the current architecture is non-degree.
Assessing fleet governance (Applied Case Lab, proposed)
The proposed Level 2 programme would be assessed on the same principle — produced work a stranger could inspect — with its own descriptors. Nothing below alters the Foundation's ten domains, four gates, weights or pass rules, which are specified at v1.0 and unchanged.
Seven proposed domains, two proposed gates
Population architecture and registry integrity · authority envelope design for agent classes · delegation, inheritance, separation of duties and attribution (gate) · runtime authorisation decisions, aggregate limits and fail-closed behaviour · revocation cascade and recovery (gate) · evidence sufficiency and incident reconstruction · governance review, professional judgement and defence. A score below competent in either gate would block a pass regardless of total.
Assessed objects and automatic returns
Enterprise Mandate Registry, Agent Authority Envelope, Delegation and Accountability Map, Runtime Authorisation Decision Records, Fleet Incident and Revocation Record, Claims-to-Evidence Matrix, Independent Governance Review and an oral defence under a material change — all on the ME-001 case. Proposed automatic returns: a registry with an active identity lacking a valid mandate; a decision record showing a denied action as executed; a revocation claimed without verification; fabricated evidence; authorship that cannot be established. Weights, gates and descriptors are proposals; the Lab has not run. Applied Case Lab
Programme enquiries
The Institute corresponds with practitioners, organisations, standards bodies, regulators, insurers and prospective participants who see the same gap. There is no application, enrolment or payment form; early interest registration opens shortly; enquiries are answered by e-mail.
Programme enquiries
Mandate Engineering — Foundation is In Development — Not Open for Enrolment. Enquiring does not place you on a waiting list and creates no obligation on either side.