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HATS Standard — Draft v1.0
HATS Standard · Layer 7 H33-TRUTHSee how replayable verification works end-to-end →

Replay-Grade
Governance Infrastructure

Agentic Post-Quantum Conversion (APQC) — the specification suite →
Eleven specifications defining governed, autonomous, cryptographically-proven transformation of critical infrastructure.

HATS is an open governance and replay protocol for independently verifiable operational evidence. Any system. Any verifier. Deterministic outputs. Forever.

Current Version 1.0.0
Status Draft
Editor Eric Beans
PQ Profile HATS-PROFILE-PQ-SHA3-256-v1
Verification Pipeline
Input System
Structure Governance Graph
Evidence Replay
Output Independent Verification
Protocol Properties

What HATS Guarantees

HATS is the open governance-and-replay standard that records and monitors independently verifiable operational evidence over time. This Standards hub is the entry point to the HATS family: the Architecture (its components), the Specification (its exact wire format), the Conformance Suite (its pass/fail test vectors), the Verification Guarantees (what a passing verdict does and does not mean), and the .h33bundle portable evidence format. Unlike a product page, these are the normative technical documents; every attestation they describe anchors to the H33-74 post-quantum primitive.

HATS is a publicly available technical conformance standard for continuous AI trustworthiness; certification under HATS provides independently verifiable evidence that a system satisfies the standard's defined controls.

Architecture

Governance as Deterministic Infrastructure

HATS treats governance not as documentation but as a deterministic system with defined inputs, reproducible outputs, and machine-testable conformance.

LayerFunctionProperty
Governance Graph Structured representation of policies, controls, and authority bindings deterministic
Replay Engine Reconstructs verification state from governance graph and evidence bundle reproducible
Rejection Semantics Stable error codes, severity classification, requirement references frozen
Transcript Binding Canonical encoding and hash derivation for all verification artifacts immutable
PQ Attestation Post-quantum signatures over governance state and verification outputs quantum-resistant

Governance reconstruction does not require trust in the original signing authority. The verification bundle is the evidence. The replayer is the judge.

Conformance

Machine-Testable. Not Self-Asserted.

HATS conformance is a test result, not a marketing claim. Canonical vectors define byte-identical expected outputs for every verification path.

$ hats-verify conformance --vectors ./hats-v1.0.0/ --profile PQ-SHA3-256

PASS  26/26 canonical vectors
PASS  transcript derivation
PASS  rejection semantics (all 26 error codes)
PASS  replay integrity classification
PASS  domain separator consistency

Profile: HATS-PROFILE-PQ-SHA3-256-v1
Result: CONFORMANT
ImplementationLanguageVectorsStatus
H33 Reference Rust 26/26 Conformant
Your implementation Register
Documentation

Read the Standard

The HATS standard is defined across six documents. Each addresses a distinct verification concern.

Authority Substrate · v1.0.0
Q-Sign Standard
The verifiable authority and accountability substrate for autonomous systems. Five components — Lineage DAG, Q-Key, BAAE, Replay, NAP — triple-family post-quantum signed and emitted as portable .h33pqv.json receipts.
Continuous Attestation
H33-PQ Verified
The continuous post-quantum attestation standard. Five-pillar evaluation: Cryptography, Evidence, Governance, Privacy, Verification. Live score, live findings, portable proof every cycle. Powered by HATS.
Portable Audit Bundle
.h33bundle v1
One drag-droppable artifact bundles receipts, envelopes, proofs, and parameter captures with file-level SHA3-512 integrity. Hash-only trust model. Offline verifier. The portable artifact a verified posture ships as evidence.
Core Document
Specification
The complete HATS protocol specification. Requirements, data models, verification semantics, error taxonomy, proof profiles.
Verification
Verification Guarantees
What HATS verification proves. Deterministic properties, replay integrity levels, and the boundary between verified and unverified claims.
Testing
Conformance Suite
26 canonical test vectors. Byte-identical expected outputs. Machine-verifiable conformance for any implementation in any language.
Stability
Protocol Stability
Frozen surfaces, compatibility rules, and version governance. What can change, what cannot, and what requires a breaking version.
Concept
Replay-Grade Evidence
What "replay-grade" means. The distinction between attestation, audit, and independently reconstructible verification evidence.
Tooling
Verifier CLI
Download the reference verifier. Run conformance checks locally. Validate governance bundles against the canonical test vectors.
Rejection Semantics

Deterministic Failure

Non-conformant governance does not silently degrade. It fails with stable error codes, severity classification, requirement traceability, and replay integrity grading.

{
  "error": "HATS_ERR_POLICY_EXPIRED",
  "severity": "critical",
  "requirement": "REQ-1.3",
  "replay_integrity": "deterministic",
  "rejection_class": "policy_violation",
  "deterministic": true
}
Ecosystem

Independent Implementations Welcome

HATS is defined by its specification and canonical vectors, not by any single codebase. Third-party implementations can validate protocol equivalence without trusting H33 infrastructure.

Contact standard@h33.ai to register your implementation for conformance certification.

Rust-native cryptography. Language-neutral verification.

The H33 reference implementation is pure Rust. The cryptographic hot path does not depend on JavaScript or browser runtimes. Proving, verification, transcript construction, field arithmetic, and challenge derivation execute without any scripting layer.

Portable JSON test vectors allow independent verifiers in Go, TypeScript, Python, Java, or Rust to reproduce identical outputs. The verification path is fully deterministic and backed by canonical conformance vectors for third-party reimplementation.

Why It Exists

Why This Standard Exists — And When Not To Reach For It

HATS exists because operational trust is usually asserted, not proven. By defining governance as deterministic, replayable, post-quantum-signed evidence with a frozen verification surface, HATS lets any independent party reach the same verdict without trusting the operator. That is the whole point of publishing it as an open standard with canonical vectors rather than a proprietary product feature.

Use it when operational evidence must be independently verifiable and replayable by someone who does not trust the producer — continuous control verification, claim evidence, or regulated governance records.

Do not read HATS as a legal compliance certification or a guarantee about a system's correctness, availability, privacy, or completeness — those boundaries are stated precisely on the Verification Guarantees page. For the product framing see HATS; this hub links the normative technical documents.

What is HATS?

An open governance-and-replay standard for independently verifiable operational evidence. It records and monitors evidence over time with deterministic replay, frozen verification semantics, and post-quantum signed attestations, so any party can build a conformant verifier without trusting H33 infrastructure.

What documents make up the HATS standard?

The Architecture (components), the Specification (wire format), the Conformance Suite (test vectors), the Verification Guarantees (what a verdict means), and the .h33bundle portable evidence format. Every attestation anchors to the H33-74 primitive.

When should I use the HATS standard?

When operational evidence must be independently verifiable and replayable by a party who does not trust the operator — continuous control verification, claim evidence, or regulated governance records. It is a technical standard, not a legal compliance certification.

What does HATS NOT guarantee?

HATS attests the integrity of the record, not the correctness of the decision, availability of the system, privacy of the data, completeness of what was recorded, or compliance with any regulation. Those boundaries are stated precisely on the Verification Guarantees page.

Can I implement HATS independently?

Yes. HATS is defined by its specification and canonical test vectors, not by any single codebase. Independent verifiers in Go, TypeScript, Python, Java, or Rust can reproduce identical outputs, and conformance is decided by reproducing the frozen vectors byte-for-byte.

Verify the Protocol Yourself

Download the canonical test vectors. Run the reference verifier. Build your own implementation. The protocol is the proof.

Read the Specification Download Verifier CLI