Governance Framework — v2.0

CORTAVEL

Coordinated Oversight Regime for Trusted Agentic Verification and Escalation Limits

Boards and investors are authorising AI that acts autonomously. CORTAVEL is the governance standard that makes autonomous AI accountable — protocol-agnostic, auditable by design, and built for the boardroom.

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The Governance Gap

Existing frameworks
don't govern agents.

Boards are being asked to sign off on AI systems that act without asking — initiating processes, making decisions, and escalating tasks autonomously across enterprise operations.

COSO governs financial controls. ISO 27001 governs information security. The EU AI Act governs high-risk classifications. None of them govern what happens when an AI agent takes autonomous action on behalf of your organisation.

The result: organisations can demonstrate their AI is deployed, but not that it is governable.

01
No delegation standard
No framework defines who may instruct an agent, to what scope, or what authority chain makes an autonomous action attributable.
02
No escalation protocol
Existing GRC tools have no concept of an agent that must pause, escalate, or abort based on decision-point risk.
03
No auditable intent layer
Multi-agent pipelines produce no chain-of-custody for intent — regulators and auditors have nothing to examine.
04
No board attestation model
Directors cannot sign a declaration about AI governance they don't have a framework to describe.
The Five Domains

A governance regime
built for the agent layer.

CORTAVEL structures agentic AI governance across five interlocking domains. Each domain addresses a distinct accountability gap — together they form a complete, auditable regime that boards can attest to and regulators can examine.

Domain 01
Delegation Authorisation
Defines who may instruct an agent and to what scope. Establishes the chain of accountable principals for every autonomous action — making delegation explicit, not assumed.
Domain 02
Escalation Thresholds
Codified conditions under which an agent must pause, escalate, or abort. Prevents unchecked autonomous execution at high-consequence decision points across any architecture.
Domain 03
Audit Trail Standards
Minimum requirements for action logging, intent capture, and chain-of-custody across multi-agent pipelines. Designed to be produced in regulatory proceedings without further processing.
Domain 04
Protocol Interoperability
Governance applies across agent architectures, orchestration protocols, and vendor platforms. Not model-specific. Not tool-specific. Vendor-neutral by design.
Domain 05
Board Attestation Model
Translates technical compliance into board-level declarations. Enables CORTAVEL certification to be cited in annual reports, investor disclosures, and regulatory submissions — giving directors the language to govern what they've authorised. This domain is what distinguishes CORTAVEL from a technical standard: it is the bridge between the agent layer and the boardroom.
Who It's For

Built for boards.
Readable by regulators.

CORTAVEL is designed for organisations that have moved beyond AI experimentation into enterprise-scale agentic deployment — and now need governance infrastructure to match.

Unlike developer-focused frameworks, CORTAVEL is written for the people accountable for what AI does: boards, audit committees, chief risk officers, and legal counsel. It is the governance layer between technical implementation and institutional accountability.

CORTAVEL-aligned organisations can demonstrate to investors and regulators not just that their AI is compliant, but that it is governable.

OWASP Agentic Top 10 EU AI Act GDPR Compatible ISO 31000 Aligned COSO Adjacent
Existing Frameworks
CORTAVEL
Governs data and software
Governs intent, action, and delegation
Point-in-time compliance
Continuous operational governance
Model or vendor-specific
Protocol-agnostic across all architectures
Technical audit artefacts
Board-ready attestation declarations
Reactive incident response
Proactive escalation thresholds
Silent on autonomous action
Explicit accountability for every agent act
Get in Touch

Request a
framework briefing.

CORTAVEL is available for enterprise adoption, regulatory engagement, and board-level briefings.

If your organisation is deploying agentic AI and needs governance infrastructure that your board can stand behind, we'd like to speak with you.

Domain
cortavel.com
Version
CORTAVEL v2.0 — February 2026
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CORTAVEL is available for trademark registration in Nice Class 42 and 35