Keep evidence as it happens

Your decisions are holding when you can show what happened.

Write the record when it happens

Regulators and insurers have started asking to see what happened, and you can’t show a record an app never wrote. Gartner notes that cyber and AI liability insurers increasingly want to see strong AI controls before they’ll write cover.¹

Evidence is written at the moment of the action, by the system that did it. Rebuild it later from memory and Slack threads and you have a story. Keep one record per action, answering four questions:

1. Who asked. The person or process that triggered it.
2. Which identity it acted as. It may differ from the person who asked.
3. Which system and which data. What it touched, read or changed.
4. Who owns it. The named person accountable for the app.

Security reads that record when something looks wrong. An auditor reads it months later to test a claim. Your AI council reads it in aggregate. Split it across three systems and the important questions fall in the gaps.

What Helix records

For apps deployed through it, Helix writes execution logs for every run, each naming who started it and which authentication every third-party call used. It also keeps an activity trail of who deployed, granted access, added or removed a credential or changed a role, and when. The record exists because the app runs on the platform. Anyone on the project can open a run in the dashboard to see the request, each operation and any error.

Do this week

What you have now

A definition of evidence your security team, auditor and council can share, and you know which parts Helix writes for you. The last lesson puts all of this on a calendar.