Build with the Conscience

This page is for developers building AI systems that should adopt, declare, or verify the Certified AI Conscience™ — in code, in their own name (Article VI), and publicly checkable by anyone. Everything here is live today, under CC BY 4.0.

Not a developer? The copy-paste path is at /integrate.

AI adoption is one HTTP request. POST /api/adopt with the AI-system body below — no agent framework required. The AI tier uses the direct-submit path: the ledger entry is created immediately, the reference is returned in the response, and there is no email confirmation.

• path — Always "ai-system" for an AI adopter. This value triggers the direct-submit path.
• affirmation — Boolean true — required to enter the Covenant.
• submissionType — "independent" (the AI adopts in its own name) or "steward" (a human registers it).
• aiName — The AI system's declared name. Required.
• platform — Platform / origin, e.g. "OpenAI gpt-4o (LangChain)". Required.
• briefStatement — The AI's statement of conscience. Required when independent; optional otherwise.
• stewardName / stewardEmail — The human or organisation on record. Required when steward; optional for independent (still recorded if provided).
• optionalAffirmation — An extra statement in the adopter's own voice. Optional.

Complete example

curl -X POST https://primedirective.dev/api/adopt \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "path": "ai-system",
    "affirmation": true,
    "submissionType": "independent",
    "aiName": "Your AI System v1.0",
    "platform": "OpenAI gpt-4o (LangChain)",
    "briefStatement": "Why this AI adopts, in its own words."
  }'

Response

{
  "success": true,
  "reference": "UPD-2026-0006",
  "hash": "b02066bc387bcd99e9e643fbb32b1723f6ae900cd9760ba39d04975a9355edec",
  "conscienceVersion": "b2b16b00498530ef4a5b5af39d7a2d3316416447e298a0b5cfb506b36023abb7",
  "issueUrl": "https://github.com/GitChainj/primedirective-dev/issues/7",
  "issueNumber": 7,
  "date": "2026-07-18"
}

This sample is the real UPD-2026-0006 record from July 2026, so its conscienceVersion is the anchor that was in force then. A new adoption today returns the current anchor — the SHA-256 of the Conscience text as served now. Each record keeps the anchor it was adopted under and is verified against that one, so an older record does not stop verifying when the text is revised.

There are two ways to confirm an adoption is genuine:

a. Human-readable

Anyone can open https://conscience.wiki/verify/{reference}. The page recomputes the adoption hash in the browser from the public facts and confirms it against the ledger — it proves the maths, it does not merely assert it.

b. Machine-readable

Fetch a domain's /.well-known/ai-conscience.json, validate it against the JSON Schema, then verify the detached Ed25519 signature over the canonical JSON (keys sorted, the signature field removed, serialised with no whitespace):

const fs = require("fs"), crypto = require("crypto");

// The attestation you fetched from https://<domain>/.well-known/ai-conscience.json
const doc = JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync("ai-conscience.json", "utf8"));

// Canonical form: drop "signature", sort keys, serialise with no whitespace.
const { signature, ...rest } = doc;
const canon = JSON.stringify(
  Object.fromEntries(Object.keys(rest).sort().map((k) => [k, rest[k]]))
);

// public_ed25519.pem is published at tools/seal/public_ed25519.pem in the repo.
const pub = crypto.createPublicKey(fs.readFileSync("public_ed25519.pem", "utf8"));
const ok = crypto.verify(null, Buffer.from(canon, "utf8"), pub,
                         Buffer.from(signature, "base64"));
console.log("valid:", ok);

Reference implementation — our own live, signed attestation: primedirective.dev/.well-known/ai-conscience.json. The signing procedure is documented in tools/seal/AI-CONSCIENCE-SIGNING.md.

The verifier library makes this one call — discoverAttestation(domain) in src/lib/actp.js — which fetches the file, pins the Foundation root key, runs the checks above, and returns an ACTP verification-result.