How it works

Receiver-side action assurance, step by step

First Instinct sits with the receiving organisation. It reads the evidence an external action already carries, applies your policy, and preserves a record you can replay — alongside the outcome the Target system issues for itself.

01
Observe

Receive an external action and the evidence already available to the customer.

02
Evaluate

Apply receiver-owned policy without changing production behaviour.

03
Compare

Record whether the action would be allowed, denied, escalated or remain indeterminate.

04
Preserve

Keep a source-attributed evaluation record and verify the Target's separately issued outcome.

Evaluation states

Four reproducible states

allowEvidence and policy conditions are met; the action may be accepted.
denyPolicy conditions are not met; the action should not be accepted.
require-human-approvalThe action needs a human decision before it can be accepted.
indeterminateNot an error. Evidence is insufficient, a status cannot be confirmed, or a binding cannot be verified.
Result separation

Vendor assertion, receiver decision and target outcome are attributed separately

Platform / IdP / carrier / payment rail

Signs limited source facts.

First Instinct

Produces the receiver-side evaluation under your policy.

Target system

Signs what it actually accepted or completed: accepted_for_processing, completed, failed or reversed.

First Instinct verifies Target Receipts. It does not sign the Target’s business outcome.

Where First Instinct sits

The evidence ecosystem, A1 to A5

First Instinct consumes A1–A4 evidence but does not own or replace it. It occupies A5: receiver acceptance and outcome accountability.

TierLayerExamples
A1Actor and identity evidenceEnterprise IdP, OAuth/OIDC, credentials, device or account evidence.
A2Sponsor and mandate evidenceDelegation, scope, expiry, approval, organisational authority.
A3Runtime and request evidenceAPI gateway, MCP/A2A, request signature, nonce, tool invocation.
A4Payment, state and network evidencePSP, bank, card network, wallet, carrier or device signals.
A5Receiver acceptance and outcome accountabilityFirst Instinct's position: evaluate the action under receiver policy, preserve replayable evidence.
On the market

We have not yet confirmed whether the market already offers a complete commercial product combining cross-protocol evidence, receiver-controlled policy, local reproducibility, independently attributed Target outcomes and vendor neutrality.

Network Assurance

Carrier and network signals are optional evidence, not a dependency

A carrier, CAMARA or aggregator signal is an optional, source-attributed evidence input in A4. The receiver decides whether to trust it, and it may move an evaluation between allow, deny, require-human-approval and indeterminate. It is never the basis of the decision on its own.

  • Pluggable, and not dependent on any single operator.
  • The baseline evaluation still runs with no operator signal present.
  • First Instinct does not treat number verification as full KYC.
  • First Instinct does not treat SIM status as organisational authorisation.
  • Third-party operator costs are passed through transparently, at cost.
  • Customer-owned (BYOC) operator or aggregator contracts are supported first.