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Recording a clean check as durable audit evidence, and detecting drift. Part of the openclaw policy reference.

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Accept policy state

Example JSON output:
attestation.policy.hash identifies the authored rule artifact. evidence records the observed OpenClaw state used by the checks, and workspace.hash identifies that evidence payload. findingsHash identifies the exact finding set. checkedAt records when the check ran. attestationHash identifies the stable claim (policy hash, evidence hash, findings hash, and clean/dirty state) and deliberately excludes checkedAt, so the same policy state always produces the same attestation hash. Together these four values form the audit tuple for one policy check. If a gateway or supervisor uses policy to block, approve, or annotate a runtime action, it should record the attestation hash from the last clean check. checkedAt stays in JSON output for audit logs but is not part of the stable hash. Lifecycle for accepting policy state:
  1. Author or review policy.jsonc.
  2. Run openclaw policy check --json.
  3. If clean, record attestation.policy.hash as expectedHash.
  4. Record attestation.attestationHash as expectedAttestationHash.
  5. Re-run openclaw doctor --lint in CI or release gates.
If policy rules change intentionally, update both accepted hashes from a clean check. If only workspace settings change (policy stays the same), typically only expectedAttestationHash changes. Enabling or upgrading agents.workspace rules adds agentWorkspace evidence to the workspace hash and attestation hash; review the new evidence and refresh accepted attestation hashes after enabling. Enabling or upgrading tool posture rules adds toolPosture evidence the same way. openclaw policy watch re-runs the check and reports when current evidence no longer matches expectedAttestationHash:
Use --once in CI or scripts that need a single drift evaluation. Without --once, it polls every two seconds by default; use --interval-ms to change the interval.