What is KCP Harness?

KCP Harness is an MCP compliance proxy that enforces deterministic knowledge governance for any AI agent. It sits between an agent and its tools, intercepting knowledge-related calls and routing them through the kcp-agent planner before execution.

The Problem

Today's AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, etc.) can read any file in your project. They can't prove:

• Why they read what they read
• What they didn't read (and why)
• That they stayed within budget
• That the knowledge was temporally valid when accessed

For enterprises that need defensible, auditable AI workflows, this is a gap.

The Solution

KCP Harness adds a compliance layer between the agent and its tools:

Agent (Claude Code / Cursor / Copilot / ...)
  │
  │  MCP tool call
  v
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│  kcp-harness (MCP proxy)            │
│                                     │
│  1. Receive tool call               │
│  2. Classify: knowledge-nav? Y/N    │
│  3. If Y → 13-gate cascade          │
│     • audience / temporal / budget   │
│     • decision trace → audit log    │
│  4. If N → pass through             │
│  5. Return result + metadata        │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘
  │
  v
Knowledge manifests (knowledge.yaml)

The agent can't bypass governance because it only talks to the proxy's MCP interface. The proxy decides what knowledge is accessible, tracks spend, and logs every decision.

Key Properties

Property	What it means
Deterministic	Same inputs → same plan. No model involved in knowledge selection.
Fail-closed	If the harness can't verify a request, it blocks it. No silent fallback.
Audit-first	Every decision produces a compliance artifact. Even pass-throughs are logged.
Agent-agnostic	Works with any MCP-capable agent. One config per agent.
Session-aware	Tracks loaded knowledge across calls. Dedup prevents redundant loads.

Three-Layer Architecture

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Layer 3: Integration Packages               │
│  Agent-specific configs + rules files        │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Layer 2: KCP Compliance Harness             │  ← THIS
│  MCP proxy — deterministic governance        │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Layer 1: kcp-agent (planner core)           │
│  13-gate cascade, decision traces            │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Next Steps

• Installation — install via npm or native binary
• Quick Start — get governance running in 5 minutes
• Architecture — deep dive into the proxy pipeline