What ActaSeal is not
Each line below is a limit of the product. If a limit matters for what you are buying it for, you should know it before you read anything else on this site.
It cannot stop an agent that never asks
The gateway decides about the actions it is asked about. An agent, or a developer, that sends a payment without calling the gateway is not stopped by it. The console can show actions that ran without a decision when it is given a log of what ran, but it cannot prevent them.
It does not move money
It answers allow, block, or hold for a person, and signs the answer. Your own code makes the payment, the refund or the transfer.
It does not know whether the evidence is true
A policy can require evidence from a named source, such as an order system. ActaSeal checks that the evidence is signed by that source and has not changed. If the source is wrong, the decision is made on something wrong, and the receipt will say exactly what it was made on.
A receipt does not say the decision was right
A receipt shows what was decided, under which version of which policy, on what evidence, and that none of it has been altered since. Whether the policy was a good one is a separate question.
The offline verifier does not decide again
It checks signatures, the hash chain and the documents in a packet. It does not re-run the policy. The browser demo and the npm package check less than the Python verifier: the hash chain and Ed25519 signatures only, and each says so.
It is not a certification and its exports are not legal advice
The exports are evidence prepared for a standard or a regulator. ActaSeal is not certified under any of them, and nothing it produces says that you comply with anything. Certification and legal judgement are yours and your advisers'.
It does not route or inspect model traffic
It is not an LLM gateway, a prompt filter or a model router. It sits in front of actions, not in front of models.
It cannot judge a person's judgement
When a person approves an action, the receipt records who, when and what they were shown. It does not say they were right to approve.