Judges

Judges (Intelligent Authorization / The Court) holds the audit and event contract for Court deliberation when Cedar returns no_match.

Where Court evidence lands

Success events (rulings, Court configuration changes, permission denies) land on the customer workspace audit trail with the rest of that workspace’s evidence. Outbound LLM calls The Court makes while deliberating land as llm.* events on the platform judges workspace trail under the LLM gateway. Investigators looking for “what did the Court decide for this agent?” stay on the customer trail. Questions about “which models did Court call?” belong on the platform judges workspace.

Rename (`moot.` → `judges.`)

Renamed from Moot in the 2026-06 release. Audit rows written before the cutover keep their original event-type strings (moot.*) and remain readable, queryable, and typed. The registry carries read-path aliases that resolve them to the same payload shape. All new rows write judges.*. Update saved queries and dashboards to the new prefix. Permissions (moot.view / moot.manage), CLI (dome moot), MCP (dome_moot_*), the Moot Connect service, and Decision.depth "intelligent" are a hard rename to judges with no alias.

Audit v1 event types

Governing

Type	Description
`judges.deliberation.attempted`	Court deliberation started
`judges.ruling.issued`	Court convened and persisted a ruling. Payload includes `convening_reason` (`no_match`, `policy_reduce`, `policy_expand`, `all`, `judge_policy`) and `trigger_rule_ids` (populated with matching judge-rule IDs when `convening_reason` is `judge_policy`, empty otherwise)
`judges.court.unavailable`	Court unavailable during deliberation
`judges.court.unavailable.denied`	Every judge errored or timed out, so the request is denied fail-closed. Also emitted with `reason: "persistence_failed"` and `would_have: "permit"` when a `live`-mode Court `permit` fails to persist. Carries the same `convening_reason` and `trigger_rule_ids` fields

State change: configuration

Type	Description
`judges.constitution.created`	Constitution created
`judges.constitution.updated`	Constitution updated
`judges.constitution.deleted`	Constitution deleted
`judges.judge.created`	Judge created
`judges.judge.updated`	Judge updated
`judges.judge.deleted`	Judge deleted
`judges.panel.updated`	Judge panel updated
`judges.judge_panel_config.updated`	Panel seating, enabled state, or weights changed
`judges.workspace_mode.updated`	Workspace mode set to `disabled`, `audit`, or `live`

State change: permission denies

Read denies (lack judges.view): judges.rulings.list.denied, judges.ruling.read.denied, judges.judges.list.denied, judges.judge.read.denied, judges.judge_panel_config.read.denied, judges.workspace_mode.read.denied, judges.constitutions.list.denied ListPersonalityAxes is platform reference data and carries no permission gate, so it has no *.denied variant. Write denies (lack judges.manage, or a preconfigured immutable target): judges.judge.create.denied, judges.judge.update.denied, judges.judge.delete.denied, judges.judge_panel_config.update.denied, judges.workspace_mode.update.denied, judges.constitution.create.denied, judges.constitution.update.denied, judges.constitution.delete.denied Updates and deletes of a preconfigured judge use reason: "preconfigured_immutable".

Permissions

Permission	Role
`judges.view`	Read rulings, judges, panel config, constitution, workspace mode. Workspace `admin`, `operator`, `security`, `developer`, and `viewer`
`judges.manage`	Update mode and panel, and CRUD custom judges and constitution. Workspace `admin` and `operator` only

Preconfigured judges remain immutable regardless of judges.manage. Renamed from moot.view / moot.manage in the 2026-06 release.

Gateway denial extension (Court)

The shipped authorization denial protocol documents the Cedar path. When The Court determines a deny, the same dome_authorization_denied extension adds Court-specific fields.

Field	Type	Description
`reason_code`	string	Closed vocabulary. Cedar / Court / fail-closed denials resolve to `permission_denied`.
`reason`	string	Verbatim human reason (e.g. `forbidden by court`, `court_unavailable`). Secret-free by construction.
`depth`	string	`judges` when the Court determined the outcome (`deterministic` when Cedar alone decided).
`determining_policy`	string (optional)	Empty on Court determinations (no single Cedar rule decided it).
`court`	object (optional)	Present only when `depth == "judges"`. Its presence is the signal that the Court convened.

Court summary

When depth == "judges", the court object carries the agent-facing summary of the Court determination. Fetch the full deliberation via ruling_id against the Judges read RPCs.

Field	Type	Description
`ruling_id`	string (optional)	Persisted ruling id. Empty on degraded paths (`court_unavailable` with a persistence failure).
`outcome`	string (optional)	The Court’s own vote: `permit`, `forbid`, or `court_unavailable`. May differ from `final_outcome` when the directional clamp reduced a permit to a forbid.
`final_outcome`	string	The outcome actually applied after clamping: `forbid` or `court_unavailable` on a deny.
`convening_reason`	string	Why the Court was convened: `no_match`, `policy_reduce`, `policy_expand`, or `all`.
`rationale`	string (optional)	Short summary of the deciding judge’s justification, surfaced verbatim. Secret-free by upstream construction.

On the hosted-gateway path (what most cloud customers run), outcome and rationale are not inlined. Only final_outcome crosses the wire. Distinguishing court-forbade from court-permitted-but-clamped on that path requires fetching the full ruling by ruling_id. The inline fields are populated on in-process convene.

Wire shapes

MCP — Court forbid

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "error": {
    "code": -32001,
    "message": "forbidden by court",
    "data": {
      "type": "dome.authorization_denied",
      "reason_code": "permission_denied",
      "reason": "forbidden by court",
      "depth": "judges",
      "court": {
        "ruling_id": "rul_01HXYZ...",
        "final_outcome": "forbid",
        "convening_reason": "no_match"
      }
    }
  }
}

LLM (Anthropic) — Court forbid

{
  "type": "error",
  "error": {
    "type": "permission_error",
    "message": "forbidden by court"
  },
  "dome_authorization_denied": {
    "reason_code": "permission_denied",
    "reason": "forbidden by court",
    "depth": "judges",
    "court": {
      "ruling_id": "rul_01HXYZ...",
      "final_outcome": "forbid",
      "convening_reason": "no_match"
    }
  }
}

Consuming the Court fields

def explain_deny(response_body: dict) -> str | None:
    deny = response_body.get("dome_authorization_denied")
    if not deny:
        return None

    parts = [f"Denied: {deny['reason']}"]
    if rule := deny.get("determining_policy"):
        parts.append(f"Rule: {rule}")
    if court := deny.get("court"):
        parts.append(f"Court ruling: {court.get('ruling_id', 'unavailable')}")
    return " | ".join(parts)

Webhook types

Webhook catalog includes judges.ruling.issued (Security signals bundle and Security decisions group). High volume with other per-request security decisions. Point at a log sink rather than a chat channel.

Next steps

With that Judges and Court model in mind, continue with:

Intelligent Authorization concept covers the Court model, modes, and fail-closed persistence
Resolve Access Ambiguity explains how to configure and roll out
Develop documents the shipped deny extension (Cedar path)
Events reference documents shipped Audit v1 and webhook contracts (Judges types omitted while unshipped)
CLI Judges · MCP Judges

Get started

Core concepts

Connect

Govern

Operate

Manage

Develop

Reference

Where Court evidence lands

Rename (`moot.` → `judges.`)

Audit v1 event types

Governing

State change: configuration

State change: permission denies

Permissions

Gateway denial extension (Court)

Court summary

Wire shapes

Consuming the Court fields

Webhook types

Next steps

​Where Court evidence lands

​Rename (moot.* → judges.*)

​Audit v1 event types

​Governing

​State change: configuration

​State change: permission denies

​Permissions

​Gateway denial extension (Court)

​Court summary

​Wire shapes

​Consuming the Court fields

​Webhook types

​Next steps

Where Court evidence lands

Rename (`moot.` → `judges.`)

Audit v1 event types

Governing

State change: configuration

State change: permission denies

Permissions

Gateway denial extension (Court)

Court summary

Wire shapes

Consuming the Court fields

Webhook types

Next steps