Genlock's governance layer (v8) makes the machine's real capabilities legible and every production traceable and resumable — local-first, generator-agnostic, human-directed. Everything lives as auditable files under projects/<slug>/.spore/, strictly additive so existing projects keep working.
Capability Matrix (The Brain)
A Run Preflight probe detects composition runtimes (FFmpeg / Remotion / HyperFrames; native always on) and, combined with installed providers, writes a schema-valid capability_matrix.json. The Brain leads with an overall capability-health strip — Healthy / Degraded / Blocked — then honest per-capability status badges (ready / degraded / unavailable) with structured quick-setup steps.
BONE readiness
Each BONE declares a requires[] array of capability ids. Joined against the matrix, every contract shows as armed / needs-setup / unavailable in Boneyard and the Brain — so you know which shots can actually generate today.
Decision log (Showrunner)
An append-only audit of every consequential choice — provider, model, runtime, mode, quality gate — with options considered, rationale, confidence, and approval. Grouped by shot, filterable, exportable. Revisit this decision appends a superseding entry; originals are never edited. A Run Quality Review derives real findings (schema re-validation, unapproved decisions, degraded capabilities) into reviewer_findings.json.
Cost ledger
Estimate → reserve → reconcile per generation, with observe / warn / cap modes and a per-action approval threshold. No cost figures are fabricated — amounts appear only when a real figure is available.
Provider scoring
Models rank across 7 visible dimensions (task-fit, quality, control, reliability, cost, latency, continuity) with ranked options, rejected alternatives, and a score breakdown. Manual override always wins and is logged. Fallback chains degrade gracefully — never silently.
Production runs & quality gates
Resumable runs with stages, required-artifact gaps, human-approval gates, and spend — started from lightweight pipeline manifests (shot-generation, cinematic, reference-video). The Production Gap Report audits each run against its manifest; warning-gate overrides are themselves logged as decisions.
Agent grounding
Generated agent instructions point at the .spore/ artifacts: read the capability matrix before proposing anything, append every consequential choice to the decision log, never fall back silently, and never advance a human-approval stage without the user.