McPherson Governance evaluates supported tool activity against explicit policy and records what happened, what policy would have decided, what needs review, and what remains unknown.
The current public release operates in shadow mode. It has no authority to block, approve, deny, or rewrite your agents’ actions.
The GitHub and ClawHub links above are the public OpenClaw plugin. They are not the distribution path for the full private Observa beta, which is onboarded directly with Blake.
“The refund tool ran.”
“Who requested it, which policy applied, whether approval was required, whether the action completed, and whether the evidence is sufficient.”
Illustrative example only. It does not describe a specific production integration or claim that the current release observes every refund workflow.
Shadow mode is designed to evaluate policy without actively controlling production actions.
For technical OpenClaw operators who can install, configure, map, and validate their own environment.
The public v0.7.3 release ships a unified local observa CLI with verified-email access requests alongside the existing pairing and lifecycle commands, and a reproducible build. Account-free local discovery, AutoMap proposals, and the local Governability Diagnosis were introduced in the v0.6.x line and remain available.
For operators who want McPherson AI to help map tools, define policy, review shadow evidence, and identify coverage gaps.
Request Founding SetupThe v0.5 public line observed supported activity and produced shadow policy decisions and evidence.
The v0.6 public line adds local discovery, AutoMap proposals, and Governability Diagnosis. The Observa private beta is now open for selected n8n and OpenClaw workflows, adding founder-assisted mapping, governance evidence, and independent verification of supported outcomes.
Bounded enforcement is introduced only after policy, runtime, approval, and evidence gates are verified. Nothing in the current release or beta grants execution authority.
No. The current release evaluates policy in shadow mode. Remote decisions have no execution authority, and the connector does not actively block, approve, deny, delay, or rewrite ordinary tool actions.
No. The plugin is the free, public, account-free OpenClaw connector. The Observa private beta is the broader product: it accepts selected n8n and OpenClaw workflows, is onboarded directly with Blake, and adds capability mapping review, structured governance evidence, and independent verification of supported workflow outcomes. Both are shadow-only today.
When enabled, the connector can send a closed allowlist of identifiers, class labels, one-way hashes, timestamps, and mapped metadata to the governance endpoint you configure. It does not send prompts, message bodies, tool parameters, file contents, credentials, customer records, or local receipt ledgers. Operator-chosen identifiers can themselves be sensitive, so naming and retention still require review.
The connector remains non-blocking. A slow, malformed, absent, or hostile remote response can change the local observation record, but it receives no authority over the ordinary production action. Bounded queues and circuit behavior also mean some observations may be dropped and recorded as such.
No. Observation depends on supported OpenClaw hooks, correct mappings, selected tools, and the configured path. In the current public release, a tool without complete configured metadata remains local, makes no network request, and is recorded as a skipped observation. Activity outside the configured path may not be represented.
Yes. The free public plugin is intended for technical OpenClaw operators who can verify the package, configure the endpoint and private state paths, map tools, start disabled, and validate the evidence themselves. Review the current release notes before installing.
No. McPherson Governance does not certify compliance, security, safety, visibility, or completeness. Its evidence can support review, but the meaning and sufficiency of that evidence remain bounded by coverage and operator context.
Policy behavior, runtime integration, approval handling, evidence quality, failure behavior, and operator controls must be verified as explicit gates. The roadmap does not grant the current release authority it does not have.
Use the tagged public v0.7.3 package README: install through OpenClaw’s supported managed mechanism, configure it disabled, check status, and enable deliberately. Uninstall preserves receipts and does not revoke Hosted credentials — unpair first. The earlier standalone v0.6.2 lifecycle guide remains available for that historical release; from v0.7.0 onward this guidance lives in the package README.
The public v0.7.3 release declares OpenClaw 2026.8.2 or newer in its own package manifest, was built and managed-install proven against 2026.8.2, and refuses incompatible runtimes. Older 2026.6.x targets were supported by the historical v0.6.x line and are not the support target for v0.7.3. See the v0.7.3 package README for the current boundary.