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## What an agency actually gets

ThumbGate is a behavioral enforcement layer between AI agents and the tools they invoke. It is not a model, not a model-output evaluator, and not a federal data RAG system. It is the gate that decides whether a tool call leaves the agent's environment.

### Auditable agent behavior

Every gate decision is logged with the action attempted, the policy invoked, the evidence required, and the outcome. PII redaction is built in. Logs are exportable in JSON Lines for ingestion into the agency SIEM.

### Agency-owned policy

Generic LLM guardrails are vendor-controlled and opaque. ThumbGate policies live in version control inside the agency boundary, are written as code, and are enforced locally before a tool call leaves the dev environment.

### Repeated-failure prevention

A thumbs-down from an agency engineer becomes a prevention rule. On the next attempt that risky action is flagged and logged — and hard-blocked for the highest-risk classes or under strict enforcement mode — relevant for cost control and for documenting "we did not let the agent do X" in incident review.

### Vendor-neutral

Works with Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, Amp, Cline, OpenCode, and any MCP-compatible agent. No lock-in to a single model vendor. Bedrock GovCloud and Azure Government routing supported in gov mode.

### Continuous AI use-case inventory

Gate-decision telemetry produces a real-time inventory of which AI tools are actively used, by whom, on what — directly supporting OMB M-24-10 §5(a) and EO 14110 §10.1(b) inventory and risk-categorization requirements.

### Air-gap supported

ThumbGate-Core gov mode runs without telemetry, without auto-update, and without any outbound call to thumbgate.ai. Agency keeps the data; ThumbGate provides the enforcement engine and the policy framework.

## Compliance posture — the honest current state

No FedRAMP marketing badge until authorization is real. Here is what is true today and what the path forward looks like.

Item | Status | Notes
--- | --- | ---
FedRAMP authorization | Not yet | Targeting Low baseline via agency sponsorship. Open to civilian agency sponsor conversations.
FISMA / NIST 800-53 Rev 5 | Partial mapping | 11 controls directly supported (see below). Public SaaS inherits Railway's controls; Core gov mode runs on-prem.
FIPS 140-2/3 validated crypto | In Core gov mode | Public ThumbGate uses Node.js native crypto; Core gov mode routes to a FIPS-validated provider on `THUMBGATE_DEPLOY=gov`.
Section 508 accessibility | Dashboard audit pending | CLI output and landing pages are screen-reader friendly; full WCAG 2.1 AA audit pending.
US persons + US data residency | Core gov deployments | Public SaaS runs in US Railway regions; Core gov mode is on-prem or government cloud only.
SBOM + supply chain provenance | Per release | SBOM and dependency report published with every npm release in `proof/`.
Third-party LLM calls | Public uses Claude directly | Core gov mode replaces direct Claude calls with Bedrock GovCloud / Azure Government routing.

## NIST 800-53 Rev 5 — controls ThumbGate produces evidence for

Family | Control | How ThumbGate supports it
--- | --- | ---
AC | `AC-3` Access Enforcement | PreToolUse hook flags and logs tool calls that violate policy regardless of operator intent, and hard-blocks them under strict enforcement mode.
AC | `AC-6` Least Privilege | Per-gate scopes bind agent actions to declared task scope.
AU | `AU-2 / AU-3 / AU-12` Audit Logging | Every gate decision logged with full payload, PII-redacted, exportable to agency SIEM.
CM | `CM-3` Configuration Change Control | Branch governance gate requires `releaseVersion` declaration before release/publish actions.
CM | `CM-7` Least Functionality | MCP allowlists constrain reachable agent tools per deployment profile.
IR | `IR-4` Incident Handling | Hallucination detector + claim verification produces evidence trails for post-incident review.
RA | `RA-5` Vulnerability Monitoring | Security scan surfaces known-bad patterns from the prevention rule library.
SI | `SI-4 / SI-7` System Integrity | Continuous gate telemetry + integrity-checkable prevention rule corpus.

## Two deployment profiles. One codebase.

Federal capabilities are an additive Core deployment profile, not a fork. The open-source ThumbGate developers install from npm is byte-identical regardless of federal work — pinned by regression tests.

### Public ThumbGate — open source

- `npm install thumbgate` → local CLI enforcement
- Railway SaaS dashboard
- Direct Claude API integration
- Best for: SBIR Phase I prototyping, agency open-source experimentation, contractor evaluation
- License: MIT

### ThumbGate-Core — gov mode

- Activated by `THUMBGATE_DEPLOY=gov`
- On-prem, AWS GovCloud, or Azure Government install
- Bedrock GovCloud / Azure Gov LLM routing — no public-internet model calls
- FIPS-validated crypto provider
- Audit log sink configurable to agency SIEM
- Air-gapped install supported
- Best for: production agency dev environments, ATO-bound deployments

Why the boundary matters. Federal expansion runs through ThumbGate-Core. The public open-source product is the protected invariant: `npm i thumbgate` on a fresh machine works with zero federal env vars set, public CI passes with Core absent, and no federal code path is reachable without explicit opt-in. Five architectural invariants are pinned by regression tests in `tests/public-core-boundary.test.js`.

## What a pilot actually looks like

A 30-minute scoping call. One agent workflow inside the agency. Two weeks of monitored gate decisions. A written report with captured behavior, blocked actions, and NIST control evidence. No procurement vehicle required for Phase 0 or Phase 1.

### Phase 0 — Now

Public technical brief, NIST control mapping, this page. No agency commitment required. Read the docs, evaluate the open-source release.

### Phase 1 — On first call

One-page CIS tailored to the agency authorization boundary. SBOM walkthrough. Air-gapped install rehearsal in a clean VM.

### Phase 2 — On signed pilot

Core gov mode install. Bedrock GovCloud / Azure Gov routing. FIPS crypto. Agency SIEM audit-log sink. Two-week monitored evaluation on one workflow.

### Phase 3 — On sponsor commitment

FedRAMP Low baseline package preparation. 3PAO engagement. ATO documentation set.

### Phase 4 — On named demand

Federal RAG over agency policy corpora. Multimodal retrieval for screenshot / PDF / diagram evidence. Built when an agency names the use case — not on speculation.

### Engagement vehicles

SBIR / STTR Phase I and II. Agency innovation pilots. Prime / SI partnership for inclusion in a larger AI governance offering. GSA Schedule path open under agency sponsorship.

Email for a scoping call → Read the full technical brief