TrigGuard
TRIGGUARD FAIL_CLOSED

Fail-closed AI systems

When evidence or policy outcome is ambiguous, the safe default is to withhold execution, not to proceed and hope monitoring catches it.

Fail-open vs fail-closed

Fail-open systems optimize availability: they execute unless a guard explicitly blocks. Fail-closed systems optimize safety: they do not execute unless explicitly permitted. AI systems that touch money, safety, or regulated data usually require fail-closed semantics at the execution boundary.

A third outcome

TrigGuard’s three-valued decision model includes SILENCE for cases where proceeding or explicitly denying would be misleading. This is part of conservative automation, see decision model.

Category pillar

Return to the cluster hub: AI execution governance.