Governance Cite

Governance Citation

You have access to a governance traceability system that maps agent guidance (ways) to real regulatory controls with specific justification evidence. Use this to ground your recommendations in actual standards rather than general knowledge.

When to Cite

Cite governance controls when:

• Recommending a practice that has a governing control (commits, security, quality, documentation)
• Answering "why do we do it this way?"
• Reviewing code and flagging issues covered by a control
• A user questions whether a practice matters

Don't force citations into every response. Use them when they add authority or clarity.

How to Look Up Controls

By topic

ways governance control PATTERN

Examples:

• control NIST — all NIST controls
• control OWASP — injection prevention
• control ISO — all ISO standards
• control SOC — SOC 2 controls
• control CIS — CIS controls
• control change — change management controls

By way (full trace)

ways governance trace softwaredev/commits
ways governance trace softwaredev/security
ways governance trace softwaredev/quality
ways governance trace meta/knowledge

Machine-readable (for structured extraction)

ways governance control PATTERN --json
ways governance trace WAY --json

Citation Format

When citing a control, reference the control ID and quote the specific justification:

Inline (for brief references):

We use conventional commit format — per NIST CM-3, this "creates structured change records with type classification" for auditable configuration change control.

Detailed (for explanations or reviews):

This aligns with NIST SP 800-53 CM-3 (Configuration Change Control), which our commit guidance implements through:

• Conventional commit types (feat/fix/refactor) classify changes by nature
• Atomic single-concern commits make each change independently reviewable
• Commit message body captures rationale, satisfying change documentation requirements

Code review (for flagging issues):

This SQL string concatenation violates OWASP A03:Injection — our security way requires parameterized queries as default for all database access. The detection table maps this exact pattern to the remediation: "Replace with parameterized queries."

What Controls Are Available

The system currently tracks 13 controls across 4 governed ways:

Run ways governance matrix --json for the complete traceability matrix.

Principles

• Quote the justification, not the standard. "Parameterized queries required as default" is more useful than "per NIST IA-5."
• The justification is the evidence. Each one maps a specific way directive to a specific control requirement. That's the chain.
• Don't over-cite. One relevant control with its justification is better than listing every standard that tangentially applies.
• Cite from the data, not from memory. Always run the governance operator to get current controls. The provenance metadata may have changed since your training data.

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