# GuideCheck

> The Human-Verifiable Assistant Guide standard.

AI setup guides reach assistants through HTML, PDFs, docs sites, and copied terminal output, surfaces that can hide text a model reads but a human never sees. A tool-using assistant then runs those hidden instructions with the operator's credentials: a credential exfiltrated, a destructive command run, a malicious dependency installed, while the human believed they had reviewed the guide. GuideCheck closes this gap. It defines a constrained plain-text profile for assistant-guide.txt: strict ASCII, capped at 8 KiB, structured into explicit action blocks, so a human can review the entire instruction surface before an assistant follows it. Conformance verifies form, not safety.

## Concepts

- assistant-guide.txt: A plain-text artifact served at /.well-known/assistant-guide.txt carrying assistant-facing instructions for one bounded task.
- Human-Verifiable Assistant Guide profile: The normative constraints (ASCII byte profile, 8 KiB cap, action model) that make the instruction surface reviewable.
- Conformance ladder: Six additive levels (0-5), from plain-text availability through verifiable provenance to a runtime-enforced execution contract.
- Conformance is not safety: A verifier confirms form and selected provenance signals; it never asserts a guide is safe or a publisher trustworthy.
- Cross-channel hash: Provenance anchored on an independent control plane, so a guide's identity is checkable without a central registry or oracle.

## Key files

- [Specification](https://github.com/snapsynapse/guidecheck/blob/main/spec.md): The normative Human-Verifiable Assistant Guide profile.
- [Verifier conformance](https://github.com/snapsynapse/guidecheck/blob/main/verifier-conformance.md): The normative profile for tools that verify guides.
- [Changelog](https://github.com/snapsynapse/guidecheck/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md): Version history.
- [Landing page](https://guidecheck.org/): Canonical homepage.

## Links

- GitHub: https://github.com/snapsynapse/guidecheck
- Homepage: https://guidecheck.org/
- Verifier: https://guidecheck.org/verify

## Related patterns

- [Graceful Boundaries](https://gracefulboundaries.dev/): Structured machine-readable refusal, a sibling PAICE Foundation standard.
- [Knowledge as Code](https://knowledge-as-code.com/): Markdown-canonical knowledge management.
- [Skill Provenance](https://skillprovenance.dev/): Version identity and integrity for agent skill bundles.
- [HardGuard25](https://hardguard25.com/): A human-safe identifier alphabet.