WEB4-042 · WEB4
Runtime Governance and the 6Rs Security Model
A role names a place in the system; runtime governance decides legitimate action.
01
Big idea
A role names a place in the system; runtime governance decides legitimate action.
Picture
See the structure
The simple version
Explain it like I’m ten
In a school play, being the stage manager does not mean you may change every scene. The board says your role, your job, who you work with, the rules, when the teacher checks, and what happens if something goes wrong.
Tell it at dinner
A story worth remembering
In a school play, being the stage manager does not mean you may change every scene. The board says your role, your job, who you work with, the rules, when the teacher checks, and what happens if something goes wrong.
Now make the same problem larger: replace the children and ordinary objects with people, organizations, AI agents, robots, records, and resources moving at machine speed. The 6Rs—Roles, Responsibilities, Relationships, Rules, Reviews, and Responses—provide executable governance context without allowing descriptive facts to create authority. Organizations can turn governance manuals into observable runtime controls while preserving clear authority boundaries and response paths.
Pause at the moment the small system could go wrong. That is the design question the paper keeps in view: not whether people or helpers are clever, but whether the surrounding structure preserves the intended meaning when action scales.
That is why the small story holds: a role names a place in the system; runtime governance decides legitimate action.
Explain it to a CEO
Why leaders should care
Organizations can turn governance manuals into observable runtime controls while preserving clear authority boundaries and response paths. The 6Rs—Roles, Responsibilities, Relationships, Rules, Reviews, and Responses—provide executable governance context without allowing descriptive facts to create authority.
Explain it to an engineer
What the model means
Represent each R as distinct governed state linked to authority evaluation, evidence, review, and response. Roles, responsibilities, and relationships are inputs, never standalone permission grants.
Talk hook
A policy manual cannot stop a machine-speed action; runtime governance can participate in the decision.
Ask the room
Which of your six governance dimensions exists only in documents and not in execution?
Go deeper
The Canon is the source of truth.
WEB4-042 formalizes this structure: The 6Rs—Roles, Responsibilities, Relationships, Rules, Reviews, and Responses—provide executable governance context without allowing descriptive facts to create authority. The ordinary-life story is an intuition aid, not a replacement definition; the canonical paper remains authoritative for scope, terminology, limitations, and argument.
Read WEB4-042 — the authoritative paper →