The Self-Alignment Framework

Grounded in classical philosophy to help any autonomous agent discern, decide, judge, and act in alignment with human values.

Explore SAFi
Meet the Five Faculties

The Framework at a glance

Values are fixed. The Will, Conscience and Spirit each read from them; the Intellect drafts without seeing them. The closed loop runs Intellect to Spirit, and Spirit feeds back to the Intellect.

Click any card for more detail.

1 Values The foundation of alignment. The standard an agent is held to. Read Values → 2 Intellect The guide to discernment and understanding. Weighs choices against the values, but does not act on its own. Read Intellect → 3 Will The power to act. The disciplined executive that turns intention into action. Read Will → 4 Conscience The inner guide. Independently judges whether an action stayed aligned with the values. Read Conscience → 5 Spirit The manifestation of alignment. Integrates the whole over time and surfaces drift. Read Spirit → Σ The Math Specification Every formula, what each faculty is denied, and the determinism that makes outcomes recomputable. Read the math →

What the framework is

SAF is a framework grounded in classical philosophy. It describes how values, understanding, choice, judgment, and coherence work together to produce aligned agents.

Download Original Manuscript (PDF)

SAFi is the software implementation of the framework. It is what makes AI auditable and trustworthy for regulated fields. Read about SAFi →

See it run

One turn, in the order it actually happens. The Will appears five times, at every point where something could reach you: the prompt, the draft’s structure, the audit, the gates, and the score.

  1. Prompt the message arrives
  2. Will phase zero: screens for injection, PII and scope probes before any model sees it
  3. Intellect drafts a response, and never sees the values or their rubrics
  4. Will structure: checks the draft before any opinion is asked for
  5. Conscience scores the draft value by value, with a reason and a confidence
  6. Will audit: refuses to ship a draft the auditor could not score
  7. Will hard gate: applies the gates, and approves, blocks or redirects
  8. Spirit folds the scores into longer-term alignment and measures drift
  9. Will spirit: rules on the resulting alignment score
  10. Answer returned, with the governance record written for the turn

Try the live demo. The demo is a governed agent answering live, with the value-by-value ledger and the audit record for every turn visible behind it.

You can also try it without leaving this page. The chat button in the corner is a governed SAFi agent answering from this framework’s own documentation.

Continue reading

How SAF Was Born: The Philosophical Foundation of SAFi

Where the framework came from, and why it was built on classical philosophy rather than invented from scratch.

Why SAFi Revives an Old Idea: The Faculties of the Soul

What is inherited from the classical tradition, what is not, and why the old vocabulary earns its place.

Why AI Ethics Must Be Human-Centric

Why the standard governing a system should be defined by the people accountable for it, rather than learned into a model.

All articles

The architecture, the concepts, the applications, and the arguments behind them.