metis

Compliance overview

One-page index for buyer compliance / procurement / legal teams. Metis ships open-core software, not a managed service — what this document maps is the application-layer control evidence Metis contributes to a buyer-operated deployment. The buyer’s cloud- provider baseline (AWS / GCP / Azure SOC2 Type 2) covers the infrastructure layer; the buyer’s internal policy set covers the organizational layer.

Not a certification. Metis itself does not hold a SOC2, ISO 27001, or HIPAA attestation. See soc2-readiness.md §8 for the realistic cert-path timeline (Type 1 readiness in Q3 2026 contingent on a buyer underwriting the audit cost).


What’s covered, what’s not

Framework Status Document Buyer responsibility
SOC2 Trust Service Criteria (Security, Availability, Confidentiality, Processing Integrity, Privacy) Gap audit shipped; no cert soc2-readiness.md Hosting in a SOC2-attested cloud account; CC8 change management; CC1 organizational controls; CC9 vendor management of upstream LLM providers.
GDPR (data protection, right-to-delete) Article 15 (access) + Article 17 (erasure) shipped via Wave 12 metis audit export + metis user forget; pseudonymization-as-erasure rather than hard-delete soc2-readiness.md §6, ../specs/redaction.md §5, ../specs/trace-retention.md, ../specs/multi-user.md §7.4 Customer-facing privacy notice; sub-processor disclosure list; DPAs with each enabled upstream LLM provider; legal counsel signs off on pseudonymization-as-erasure (hard-delete is a buyer-side extension).
HIPAA (PHI handling, BAA) Out of scope for v1 Metis is not a HIPAA-eligible posture in v1: upstream LLM providers vary in BAA availability; the workspace-scoped file API is not designed around PHI segregation. Buyers handling PHI should treat Metis as not-yet-ready and request a roadmap commitment before piloting.
ISO 27001 Out of scope for v1; substantial overlap with SOC2 controls Buyers needing ISO 27001 attestation should run the gateway in an ISO-27001-attested account; the SOC2 gap audit is broadly translatable.
PCI-DSS Out of scope (Metis does not process payment data) If the buyer’s workflow puts PCI data inside prompts, that data inherits the buyer’s PCI scope — not recommended; no Metis-side primitives for PCI segregation.
FedRAMP Out of scope for v1 Buyers in regulated US-gov contexts should not deploy Metis in v1.

The honest framing: SOC2 + GDPR is the v1 compliance surface. Everything else is either out of scope (HIPAA, FedRAMP, PCI) or inherited from the SOC2 work (ISO 27001).


“Buyer asks X → read Y” quick reference

Buyer question Primary doc Supporting docs
“Are you SOC2-certified?” soc2-readiness.md §8 — talking points (no, not yet; Type 1 Q3 2026 if you underwrite) compliance-overview.md (this file)
“Show me your SOC2 gap audit” soc2-readiness.md — full TSC mapping
“What’s your incident response process?” incident-response.md — SEV1–SEV4, first-hour playbook, post-mortem template status-page.md, sla-template.md
“What’s your SLA?” sla-template.md — 99.5% single-region template; service-credit math incident-response.md, status-page.md
“How do you handle a key compromise?” incident-response.md “Gateway-key compromise” ../specs/gateway.md §11 — key lifecycle CLI
“How do you handle PII / customer prompts?” soc2-readiness.md §4 / §6 — confidentiality + privacy ../specs/multi-user.md §3.3, ../specs/redaction.md, ../specs/event-bus-and-trace-catalog.md §4.4
“Can a user delete their data?” soc2-readiness.md §6 P4metis user forget <user_id> --confirm (pseudonymization-as-erasure) ../specs/redaction.md §5, ../specs/multi-user.md §7.4, ../specs/trace-retention.md
“How long do you keep logs?” soc2-readiness.md §2 CC7 — 90-day default, buyer-tunable via helm traceRetention.days; audit events exempt ../specs/trace-retention.md §2.1 / §5, ../specs/event-bus-and-trace-catalog.md §7.3
“Where’s the audit log?” soc2-readiness.md §2 CC6metis audit export (JSONL / CSV; 9-event v1 subset) ../specs/audit-log.md, ../specs/gateway.md §11.5, ../specs/multi-user.md §7.2
“How do you encrypt data?” soc2-readiness.md §2 CC6.7 — in-transit = TLS terminator (buyer); at-rest = volume encryption (cloud) ../gateway-deployment.md “TLS termination”
“Who has access to production?” soc2-readiness.md §2 CC6.1 / CC6.3 — gateway-key bearer auth + workspace-scoped tool API ../specs/gateway.md §3.3, ../specs/multi-user.md §3
“What’s your DR / backup story?” soc2-readiness.md §2 CC7.4metis backup / restore ../gateway-deployment.md “Backup & restore”, ../specs/event-bus-and-trace-catalog.md §7.5
“How do you handle upgrades?” upgrade-guide.md — rolling upgrade, schema migration, rollback ../specs/api-versioning.md
“Have you done a pentest?” soc2-readiness.md §7 item 2 — no; buyer-recommended
“What about GDPR right-to-delete?” soc2-readiness.md §6 P4metis user forget (pseudonymization-as-erasure) + Article 15 via metis audit export --user-id <id> --redact passthrough ../specs/redaction.md §5, ../specs/multi-user.md §7.4 item 4
“Which upstream providers do you call?” soc2-readiness.md §6 P6 — Anthropic / OpenAI / OpenRouter AGENTS.md provider-adapter list, ../specs/provider-adapter-contract.md
“What permissions does Metis need on our workspace?” ../specs/tool-dispatcher.md §5.1 — workspace-scoped file API, .. / out-of-root symlinks rejected AGENTS.md "Workspace path security"

Layered shared-responsibility model

Metis sits in the middle of three layers. A buyer’s SOC2 / GDPR / compliance story composes them together:

┌─ Buyer organization layer ──────────────────────┐
│  Policies, HR, change management (CC1, CC8),    │
│  vendor management (CC9), customer DPAs,        │
│  privacy notice, pentest, SOC2 audit fee        │
└─────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┘
              │
┌─ Metis application layer ───────────────────────┐
│  Identity / keys (CC6), incident runbooks +     │
│  backup/restore (CC7), redaction + retention    │
│  + sensitivity classification (C1, P3),         │
│  canonical message format + cost-attribution    │
│  math (PI1)                                     │
└─────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┘
              │
┌─ Cloud-provider baseline layer ─────────────────┐
│  Physical security, network controls, hardware  │
│  encryption, hypervisor isolation, regional     │
│  redundancy (CC6.4, A1.2)                       │
│  AWS / GCP / Azure each carry SOC2 Type 2       │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The buyer assembles the story by stacking attestations: their cloud provider’s SOC2 Type 2 report + the soc2-readiness.md gap audit for the Metis application layer + the buyer’s internal control documentation for the organizational layer.


Compliance posture by deployment shape

The engineering shape is unified (deployment-shape.md §6). The compliance story does differ by deployment posture — useful when the buyer’s compliance team asks which shape they’re signing off on.

Shape Where it runs Compliance posture
Local-first (dev laptop, metis chat) Operator’s workstation Loopback-only; never crosses a network boundary; no SOC2 question because no shared infrastructure. Suitable for solo / pre-pilot evaluation.
In-VPC (buyer-operated helm chart) Buyer’s cloud account (AWS / GCP / Azure) Buyer’s cloud-provider SOC2 Type 2 covers infrastructure; soc2-readiness.md covers the application layer. This is the v1 reference posture.
SaaS (Metis-hosted, not v1) Metis-operated cloud Metis would need its own SOC2 attestation for the hosted product. Not in scope for v1.

If the buyer is debating in-VPC vs SaaS, point at the table: in-VPC inherits their existing cloud baseline; SaaS would require Metis’s own audit, which is not on the v1 roadmap.


How this doc set evolves

Compliance documents drift faster than specs because they reflect operating state, not designed state. Refresh cadence:

The CHANGES.md log (../specs/CHANGES.md) is the trigger: any entry that touches access, operations, retention, audit, or privacy should fan out into a review of this doc set.