novafabric.ai/architecture

Architecture

v0.96

The black-box recorder for AI agents. One verb chain — capture, seal, replay, diff, audit — self-contained on a single machine, and the same format scales out to clusters.

01/───THE EVIDENCE LIFECYCLE

NovaFabric's strategic core is one verb chain. Every capability composes onto it.

Capture01

Wrap any command. Record every model & tool call.

Seal02

DSSE signature + RFC 3161 timestamp + Merkle proof.

Replay03

Re-run forensic, mocked, semantic, or exact.

Diff04

Compare runs; gate regressions in CI.

Audit05

Trace lineage, export sealed evidence bundles.

Self-contained · works today

Every core capability runs on a single machine — no server, no network — storing everything on the local filesystem.

Distributed-ready · experimental

The same capsule format scales out to clusters of thousands of nodes. A one-node run is simply the smallest case of a distributed run.

02/───CLUSTER-SCALE INGESTION PATH

When you scale out, evidence flows through five planes — from the compute plane where agents run to the global query layer. This is the distributed tier (experimental); a single-machine install collapses it to the compute plane.

P1
Compute Plane
Where AI agents run
P2
Node Collector
Per-machine aggregation
P3
Cluster Collector
Team-level evidence store
P4
Regional Evidence Store
Cross-team provenance
P5
Global Query Plane
Lab-wide audit and replay
← select a plane
03/───SUBSYSTEM EXPLORER

Every component and how it wires together, across the six subsystem domains. Click a box to drill in; hover to trace its connections.

click a box for detail · hover to light up its connections · esc to close

Capture

Wrap any subprocess. Record everything.

📦

Evidence model

The portable, self-contained unit of record.

🔬

Analyze

Replay, compare, trace, evaluate.

🔐

Trust

Sign, timestamp, verify evidence.

⚖️

Govern

Policy gates, approvals, compliance.

🌐

Serve

Multi-user API, dashboard, topology.

04/───DEPLOYMENT MODES

Local Dev

  • Solo developer workflow
  • SQLite — zero config
  • No server required
  • nova CLI only

Team Server

  • Shared Postgres instance
  • Cluster collector daemon
  • Web dashboard for audit
  • Row-level security isolation

HPC Cluster

  • SLURM prolog/epilog hooks
  • Node collectors per login node
  • Aggregated evidence store
  • Cross-job lineage queries
05/───DESIGN DECISIONS

SQLite → Postgres

Local SQLite for solo devs, zero-config. Postgres for teams with RLS isolation. Migration path is a single flag change.

Go collector

Python-based collection had >5% overhead. Go daemon: 295K events/sec, <1ms local latency, crash-safe WAL spool.

DSSE + RFC 3161

DSSE envelope for content signing. RFC 3161 for trusted timestamps. Both are standards-compliant and verifiable without novafabric installed.