GHOST

The Spectral Execution Layer for Autonomous Agents

"Most agents die in the light. Ours operate in the dark."

Give your AI agent a body that vanishes. GHOST is an ephemeral execution layer: an agent declares intent, spawns a short-lived signing key, executes scoped actions through an intercept that records cryptographic residue, then evaporates — leaving a tamper-evident audit trail and zero standing credentials.

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The Problem

You gave your agent AWS keys. Now you're watching CloudTrail at 3am.

Agents are ephemeral bursts of intent. Humans are persistent. Yet today's agents execute with persistent, human-shaped credentials and unbounded scope. One leaked key compromises everything, and there's no signed proof of why the agent did what it did.

The Inversion

Human model	Agent model (GHOST)
log in → do stuff → log out	declare intent → spawn → execute → evaporate → leave residue
session persists	session auto-expires (TTL)
broad standing access	scoped to declared tools
audit logs (unsigned)	Ed25519-signed, tamper-evident chain

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The Ritual (Quickstart)

pip install ghost-layer

ghost spawn --intent "deploy_staging" --ttl 300 --scope aws_ec2
ghost act   --tool aws_ec2 --action RunInstances --session-id gh_9ddb...
ghost evaporate --session-id gh_9ddb...
ghost replay    --session-id gh_9ddb...

What just happened: your agent never held a standing credential. The session lived under a second. The residue is Ed25519-signed and immutable — replay it and verify exactly why that instance spawned.

Out-of-scope calls are refused before they run:

ghost act --tool stripe --action CreateCharge --session-id gh_9ddb...
# DENIED (scope): tool 'stripe' not in session scopes ['aws_ec2']   (exit 2)

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Five Commands

Command	What it does
ghost spawn	Mint an ephemeral session + fresh Ed25519 keypair, TTL countdown begins
ghost possess	Bind an agent to the session via the intercept proxy
ghost act	Record a scoped, signed action (blocked if out-of-scope or expired)
ghost evaporate	Shred the key, sign the whole action chain, finalize the residue
ghost replay	Re-verify every signature + the root chain signature

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Use It In Code (SDK-agnostic)

The transport is injected, so GHOST wraps any HTTP client or agent framework — LangChain, the OpenAI SDK, raw requests/httpx:

from ghost import spawn, possess, evaporate, replay
from ghost.store import ResidueStore
import requests

store = ResidueStore()
session = spawn(store, intent="enrich_lead", ttl=120, scopes=["httpbin"])

def transport(method, url, headers=None, **kw):
    return requests.request(method, url, headers=headers, **kw)

proxy = possess(store, session["session_id"], transport, token="ghtok_demo")

# Auth headers the agent sets are STRIPPED; the ghost token is injected.
proxy.request("POST", "https://httpbin.org/post",
              tool="httpbin", action="submit",
              headers={"Authorization": "Bearer WILL_BE_STRIPPED"})

evaporate(store, session["session_id"])
print(replay(store, session["session_id"])["verified"])   # True

See examples/ for a LangChain-style agent and an x402 / XRPL payment agent that settles a micropayment through a single 60-second ghost body.

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Why It's Tamper-Evident

Every action is signed over a canonical hash binding session_id, sequence, tool, action, and the hashes of params/response. At evaporate, a root signature covers the ordered chain. Change one byte of the residue and ghost replay reports verified: false. The private key is gone by then — it cannot be re-signed.

spawn ─▶ keypair (priv on disk 0600, pub in residue)
  │
  ├─ act ─▶ sign(payload)  ─▶ residue row
  ├─ act ─▶ sign(payload)  ─▶ residue row
  │
evaporate ─▶ sign(chain) = root_sig ─▶ shred priv key
  │
replay ─▶ verify(each) + verify(root)   ✓ tamper-evident

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Where It Fits

GHOST is the execution-safety layer beneath the x402 agentic web. It lets autonomous agents trigger payment rails (NEXUS-402, 402Proof, XAH Portal) and act on SqueezeOS signals without ever holding a standing key — every autonomous move leaves a signed receipt.

Full catalog: scriptmasterlabs.com/stack

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Status & Roadmap

• Python CLI — spawn / possess / act / evaporate / replay
• SQLite residue store, Ed25519 signing, scope + TTL enforcement
• Intercept proxy (SDK-agnostic), tamper-detection tests (17 passing)
• Rust proxy core (performance)
• Native LangChain / OpenAI tool wrappers
• Pre/post validation hooks, webhook notifications
• Optional cloud-hosted proxy

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Install from source

git clone https://github.com/timwal78/ghost-layer
cd ghost-layer
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest -q          # 17 passed

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Built by Script Master Labs LLC · Disabled U.S. Army Veteran–Owned (SDVOSB) · Kinston, NC Docs: ARCHITECTURE.md · SECURITY.md · MIT License