Evidence and Audit

Every promotion leaves a verifiable record

Decision Capsules capture the exact inputs, policy context, and signatures behind each release decision so audits are evidence driven, not narrative driven.

"Show me proof this CVE?Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures - a unique identifier for a publicly known security vulnerability was handled correctly in the January release."

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What Stella Ops signs — and what it does not

Stella Ops signs statements about your release, not your container image. Each one is an in-toto/DSSE statement whose subject is the image digest: the SBOM, the reachability graph, VEX, the risk verdict, the policy decision, the operator approval, the promotion, and the replay result. Signing the image itself stays with your registry and build system — Stella Ops does not replace it, though it can attach an SBOM to the image in your registry.

It is the right question, and we will not pretend it away: a signature proves your installation produced the verdict, so a compromised control plane can sign a record that looks valid. What the design does is make that record hard to trust blindly and easy to catch.

Keys are generated in my install — so if my control plane is compromised, aren't its signatures still valid? →

What this means for your business

Each promotion creates a signed evidence package that security, compliance, and engineering can verify independently. Replay reproduces the original verdict from frozen inputs, even in offline environments. Decision Capsule?A signed, exportable evidence bundle that seals every input and output of a release decision for offline audit and deterministic replay

Auditors can replay decisions months later

Compliance Workflow

1
Auditor asks
"Show me proof this CVE?Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures - a unique identifier for a publicly known security vulnerability was handled correctly in the January release."
2
Operator exports
stella evidence card export evp-2026-01-14-abc123 --output./jan-release-card.json
3
Pack verifies
Auditor runs stella evidence card verify./jan-release-card.json — signatures check, digests match.
4
Replay reproduces
stella replay./jan-release-capsule/ produces identical verdict with frozen inputs.

What is a Decision Capsule

Capsules sit on a chain of custody →

A Decision Capsule is one artifact on this spine: the signed record of the Decision stage, linked by digest to the evidence recorded at the stages before it.

Exporting a Decision Capsule produces a signed, content addressed bundle with the same artifacts used during the original decision.

Artifact Digest

SHA-256 content address

Signed

SBOM?Software Bill of Materials - a complete list of all packages and dependencies in your software Snapshot

CycloneDX?An open standard format for software bill of materials (SBOM) used across the industry 1.6/1.7 · SPDX?Software Package Data Exchange - another open standard format for SBOMs, widely used in open source 3.0.1

Signed

Reachability?Analysis that proves whether vulnerable code is actually called by your application — filtering out false positives from scanner noise Evidence

Graph + edge attestations

Signed

VEX?Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange - machine-readable statements about whether vulnerabilities are actually exploitable in your context State

Lattice-resolved verdict

Signed

Policy Version

Content-addressed rules and thresholds

Signed

Approvals

Signed approval records

Signed

Frozen CVE?Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures - a unique identifier for a publicly known security vulnerability/advisory state

Frozen vulnerability feed snapshots for reproducibility

Signed

DSSE and in toto style signatures make tampering visible. Crypto profile selection supports regional and regulatory requirements. Cosign?Container signing tool from Sigstore project for signing and verifying container images and artifacts Sigstore?Open-source project providing free code signing and transparency log infrastructure for the software supply chain One evidence chain. Pluggable signing. →

CycloneDX 1.6/1.7 and SPDX 3.0.1, OCI-attached. Import from Trivy, Grype, or Syft, or generate natively. OpenVEX?An open standard format for VEX statements about vulnerability exploitability and CSAF 2.0. Multi-issuer lattice resolution with conflict detection. SARIF: Static Analysis Results Interchange Format export for IDE and CI integration.

SBOM / VEX · What Stella connects to

Source: Decision Capsules documentation

Example capsule: download and inspect

This download is a sanitized example carrying real, verifiable digests — not a product-exported capsule. Two checks genuinely succeed against it, both offline. The service name, component versions, approver identities, and CVE identifiers are placeholders.

Files in the archive

decision-capsule-2026-07-27/
|- README.txt              # what this example is and is not, with both verification recipes
|- manifest.json           # capsule identity, verdict, and the sha256 of every evidence file
|- sbom.cdx.json           # CycloneDX 1.6 SBOM snapshot
|- reachability.json       # reachability findings: 4 REACHABLE of 128 CVEs
|- policy.json             # policy version, verdict, and the digests of the inputs it was evaluated over
`- approvals.json          # two approval records (fictional identities)

Download example capsule Download signature Download public key

What you can verify against this download

Two checks succeed against this archive today, and both work with no network access and no Stella Ops installation. The first proves the tarball is the one that was published; the second proves every evidence file inside it is byte-for-byte the file the manifest names.

1 · Signature over the archive

ECDSA P-256 over SHA-256 of the archive bytes, checked against the published key. Run it from the directory holding the three downloads.

Terminal

$ cosign verify-blob --key example-capsule.pub --signature example-capsule.sig --insecure-ignore-tlog=true example-capsule.tar.gz
Verified OK

Verify the example signature with cosign (demo key). The demo signature has no transparency-log entry, so the tlog check is skipped explicitly.

2 · Digests of every file in the manifest

Extract, then compare each file's sha256 against the value recorded in manifest.json. Four files are listed; manifest.json and README.txt are covered by the signature over the archive instead of a self-referential digest.

Terminal

$ tar -xzf example-capsule.tar.gz && cd decision-capsule-2026-07-27

Terminal

$ sha256sum sbom.cdx.json reachability.json policy.json approvals.json
081846c34464b6a11cd3e05665012a315c73276594733f6140a8247d26cd594e sbom.cdx.json
bbbcdeb9986c22e74964daab1a3095c28990997ac234089c36ba57c46de0a6ca reachability.json
88add685696e7c0feab99924299db414671227aaaf5f4c7468ea96c2e3d6c44f policy.json
30b114980f6ca52ec5c2f0cec4d1ced44c8625395ce77a776ddf008e73b8dd96 approvals.json

The key is a demo key published next to the archive. These checks prove the download is intact and internally consistent; the key is not a Stella Ops release key and carries no trust beyond this file. No cosign? The README shows the equivalent OpenSSL commands.

stella evidence card verify and stella replay are product commands that need a Stella Ops installation and a product-exported capsule. They are not verification steps for this download and will not succeed against it.

Inside the manifest: manifest.json

This is the manifest shipped in the example archive, shown with digests truncated for width. The digests are real: each one is computed from the exact bytes of the file it names. In a product-exported capsule, the manifest additionally pins frozen feed snapshots and a DSSE envelope per artifact so the decision can be replayed later.

{
  "capsule_id": "cap-2026-07-27-demo01",
  "created": "2026-07-27T09:18:00Z",
  "subject": {
    "name": "example-service",
    "version": "2.4.1"
  },
  "verdict": "ALLOW",
  "policy_version": "corp-policy@2026-07-10",
  "digest_algorithm": "sha256",
  "files": {
    "sbom.cdx.json": "081846c34464b6a1…",
    "reachability.json": "bbbcdeb9986c22e7…",
    "policy.json": "88add685696e7c0f…",
    "approvals.json": "30b114980f6ca52e…"
  }
}

Deterministic replay and verification

Months later, you can validate that the same policy, evidence, and artifact digest produce the same decision. This removes uncertainty during incident review and compliance checks.

Verify signatures against pinned trust anchors.
Confirm SBOM and feed snapshot digests against the manifest.
Replay with the same policy bundle and reachability inputs.
Export the resulting verdict and supporting evidence as an audit packet.

Auditors verify signatures, check digest integrity, and replay decisions without any network access. All cryptographic material travels with the capsule.

Sovereign & Air-Gap · Run Stella Ops on Air‑Gapped Networks

Replay runs against a product-exported capsule and needs a Stella Ops installation. The example download on this page is a sanitized sample: its signature and its file digests verify offline, but it does not replay.

Independent trust artifacts status

Buyers evaluating production rollout usually ask for third-party validation in addition to first-party proofs. This section shows what is already public and what is still in-progress.

Public now — Verification keys, signed capsule examples, deterministic replay commands, and exportable evidence structures are publicly available.
In progress — Customer references are coming soon — results from our internal beta. Third-party assessment summaries are not yet published as public artifacts.
For due diligence — Security pack, architecture evidence, and pilot-reference discussions can be scoped during evaluation for teams with procurement gates.

Start with Verification Keys, Vendor security review, and Contact to request enterprise review materials.

Ready to make release decisions provable

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