Three cumulative layers
| Layer | What it establishes |
|---|---|
| GOVP core | GOVP record validity and exact binding to supplied asset bytes |
| Native verifier | The source system's signature, receipt, certificate, envelope or attestation validity |
| Application policy | Whether the verified identities, predicates, time and trust roots are acceptable |
accepted = govp_valid AND upstream_valid AND policy_allows(result)Composable evidence inputs
| Ecosystem | GOVP-bound object | Native verification that remains required |
|---|---|---|
| SCITT | Signed statement, receipt or retained bundle | Receipt, transparency service and SCITT policy |
| COSE | Exact serialized COSE message | Headers, algorithm, key, signature or MAC and policy |
| DSSE | Exact serialized DSSE envelope | Pre-authentication encoding, signatures, signer identity and payload type |
| in-toto | Attestation, envelope or bundle | Envelope, subject, predicate semantics and supply-chain policy |
| Sigstore | Bundle or release evidence | Signature, certificate identity, Rekor evidence, trusted root and policy |
| Verifiable Credentials | Exact credential or presentation representation | Securing mechanism, issuer, status, schema and relying-party policy |
| C2PA | C2PA object or media asset | Native C2PA validation, trust model and assertions |
COSE and DSSE are formats or envelopes; in-toto is an attestation framework; SCITT defines an architecture for transparency services; and Sigstore is a signing and transparency ecosystem.
Integration sequence
- Produce and natively verify the upstream evidence.
- Preserve the exact byte sequence that passed verification.
- Issue a GOVP record that binds those bytes through
asset-sha256. - Distribute the GOVP record and upstream object together.
- At receipt, run GOVP verification, native verification and application policy as distinct checks.
The signed evidence URI can identify a location, but remains untrusted input. GOVP core does not automatically dereference it or validate the object found there.
Bidirectional composition
A GOVP record can itself be submitted to a transparency, attestation or signing system that accepts arbitrary payloads. For example, a deployment can register a GOVP record with a SCITT transparency service while retaining GOVP's offline verification properties.
Current implementation boundary
The GOVP 0.1.11 reference verifier validates GOVP-1 and its binding to supplied bytes. It does not include native verifiers for the systems above. Applications invoke those implementations explicitly; future governed profiles can standardize orchestration without changing GOVP-1.