Rules are externalized.
The policy source is a file in your repository, not a convention in someone's head. It is inspectable, versionable, and diffed in review.
Approach
Structural Enforcement
Six properties. Every one of them is in the lock.
01What it is
A layer, not a model.
Strict Mode is not an AI model and does not compete with one. The model is treated as an untrusted execution layer. The product is the layer that constrains what it ships.
Structural enforcement is the pattern that defines how the constraint works. Strict Mode applies it to one domain: the interface code a team ships against its own design system. The rules are the team's. The compiled lock, the verdict, and the record are ours.
02The six properties
Six properties of a structural enforcement system.
A system that does not have all six is something else: a style guide, a linter, a review checklist. Here is each one, and what it is in the product.
Rules are compiled.
strictmode.lock is a structured artifact with a version and a source hash. A check against a stale lock refuses to run and says so.
Enforcement is mandatory.
Exit codes are the authority. Make the check required and the rule set has a veto over the merge.
The rule set has authority over the task.
No pull request, prompt, or agent instruction overrides a rule in the lock. Changing a rule changes the lock, in the open.
The system halts on ambiguity.
Rules the engine cannot evaluate are reported as uncovered on every scan, never guessed past. The gap between policy and enforcement is printed, not hidden.
The audit trail is the byproduct.
Every check leaves a record because the architecture produces one: what ran, against which lock, with what active, and what was blocked.
03The dominant alternative
Soft governance scales with attention. Structural enforcement doesn't need it.
Style guides, agent instructions, review checklists, and lint warnings are all advisory by construction. They describe the rules and hope. The model, or the person, can comply or not. The compliance is probabilistic. The enforcement is human.
Soft governance scales linearly with human attention. Structural enforcement scales independently of it. That is the entire difference, and it is why Strict Mode replaces the hope with a verdict.
Soft governance
Style guidesSystem promptsCustom GPTsPrompt engineeringHuman reviewFrameworks
Advisory. Bypassable.Structural enforcementCompiled. Enforced.
Gate
04For builders
The engine is open.
The scanner, the policy schema, the adapters, and the CLI ship under MIT, because a scanner is not the product and never was. The product is the lock: a team's design system compiled into policy with authority, the check that fails when an allowance expires or a tolerated defect is quietly fixed, and the record of what was blocked and why.