SROS v3: A Sovereign Host Runtime for Governed Agent Systems is a technical whitepaper that proposes SROS v3 as a host-runtime architecture for governed agent systems operating beyond single-turn prompting and narrow workflow wrappers. The paper argues that the central systems problem in modern agent deployment is not merely model capability, but architectural fragmentation across prompting, orchestration, tool access, memory, policy enforcement, and observability. In response, it defines SROS v3 as a unified runtime model that compiles natural-language or system intent into explicit run contracts, executes under durable orchestration, preserves operator-owned and mutation-tracked continuity, enforces policy over tool invocation and delegation, and records runtime behavior through trace-linked observability and receipt discipline. The architecture is organized into four explicit planes - the Intent and Compiler Plane, the Orchestration and Runtime Plane, the Memory and Continuity Plane, and the Governance and Observability Plane - with clear interface boundaries designed to preserve operational legibility, bounded autonomy, replayability, rollback semantics, and human-overridable control. The paper’s principal contribution is architectural and methodological rather than empirical. It formalizes SROS v3 as a systems-level runtime class distinct from a prompt pack, coding shell, or lightweight orchestration helper, and it introduces a runtime-facing contract layer consisting of the Run Contract, Tool Manifest, Trace Event, Policy Decision, Memory Mutation, and Artifact Contract. Together, these contracts define the minimum interoperable structure required for governed execution across tool use, memory ownership, policy evaluation, trace collection, and artifact production. The manuscript further specifies a governance-first autonomy model grounded in allow-ask-deny semantics, sandbox profiles, rollback-aware execution, and explicit operator approval surfaces, while also presenting an evaluation frame centered on trace completeness, tool-use correctness, policy compliance, long-horizon durability, release gating, and quarantine. The present release is therefore best read as a formal architecture paper and public roadmap anchor for production-grade governed agent execution, with disciplined claim boundaries that distinguish current design commitments from future implementation and empirical validation. License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0Author: Muqeet ul HassanActive Repository: https://github.com/skrikx/SROS_V2_OSS

This release packages the March 31, 2026 technical whitepaper together with its editable source and a companion figure set intended to make the architecture legible across conceptual, operational, and governance dimensions. The included materials describe SROS v3 as a unified host model in which intent normalization, execution planning, runtime scheduling, memory continuity, policy enforcement, observability, delegation, and rollback are treated as native runtime concerns rather than post hoc integrations. The supporting figures illustrate the unified host runtime architecture, the four-plane governed agent model, the governed agent lifecycle from intent compilation through authorization, orchestration, execution, finalization, and audit, the sovereign trust architecture and bounded approval model, the intent-to-artifact execution flow linking SR8 compilation and SR9 orchestration, and the formal delegation and topology model governing centralized, delegated, isolated, pipelined, and human-checkpointed modes of execution. Collectively, these materials are designed to support readers evaluating SROS v3 as a serious runtime abstraction for sovereign, inspectable, and policy-enforced agent operation. The release should be understood as publication-ready for public research circulation with disciplined scope. It is strongest as a systems architecture paper, runtime specification, and research-lineage artifact for governed agent systems, rather than as a completed empirical benchmark paper. The manuscript explicitly notes this boundary and positions the work as a roadmap-defining technical contribution that specifies interfaces, trust assumptions, runtime contracts, governance semantics, memory ownership rules, and evaluation criteria suitable for hardened deployment paths. In that sense, the package is intended for researchers, systems architects, runtime builders, and advanced operators interested in architectures that unify intent compilation, governed execution, operator-legible continuity, and auditable control under one runtime authority model. Release metadata within the manuscript already records the publication date, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19355678, and CC BY 4.0 licensing for public dissemination.

Agentic software systems are rapidly expanding beyond chat into tool-using runtimes that browse the web, operate over files, invoke external services, and carry work across multiple steps. In practice, however, many deployments remain structurally fragmented. Prompt logic, tool wrappers, orchestration layers, memory mechanisms, and safety controls are often assembled from separate components with weak shared contracts. This fragmentation makes governance, replayability, delegation, and enterprise deployment unnecessarily brittle. This paper proposes SROS v3, a sovereign host runtime for governed agent systems. Rather than framing the system as a narrow agent framework or prompt-pack abstraction, the paper defines SROS v3 as a runtime architecture that unifies intent compilation, durable orchestration, operator-owned memory, policy-enforced tool use, trace-linked observability, and human-overridable autonomy within one host model. The central contribution is a four-plane architecture consisting of an Intent and Compiler Plane, an Orchestration and Runtime Plane, a Memory and Continuity Plane, and a Governance and Observability Plane. The paper further defines core runtime contracts, a tool fabric model, delegation topologies, a memory model, governance semantics, and an evaluation framework suitable for production-grade governed execution. The contribution is architectural and methodological. It specifies interfaces, runtime assumptions, and validation criteria for SROS v3 while distinguishing present design commitments from future implementation and empirical work.